Does this sound like the recipe for a best novel, or major motion picture? Jenny Green is a prep school-educated high school junior with a list of male aggressors as long as her arm. At first glance, she has a lot in common with your standard modern rich-girl heroine: she’s smart, she’s coiffed, she’s occasionally shallow and self-obsessed but there are qualities that make her stand out.##M:[more]##
First, she’s funny. Second, she takes this list of men who’ve wronged her and begins a tongue-in-cheek vengeful murder spree. Third, she’s the co-creation of Plainsboro native and 1999 WW-P High School graduate Jacob Osborn, in his first novel “Jenny Green’s Killer Junior Year,” co-authored with Amy Belasen.
The Young Adult novel, published by Simon & Schuster this past September, follows a “teen princess” at Montreal’s Molson Academy. Jenny is intelligent, popular, savvy and pretty, which serves her well with both her female friends and male suitors. Unfortunately for the boys, when she learns of some of their lying and cheating ways, her revenge tends towards the homicidal.
“I’ve always been interested in the concept of the femme fatale,” says Osborn in an E-mail exchange from his Los Angeles home. He cites the 1989 black comedy film “Heathers” as one of his primary influences. “I look at the novel as a sign of the times,” he says, also noting other examples of darkly comic revenge fantasies and power/privilege stories like television shows “Dexter” and “Gossip Girl.” “Jenny takes things we think about every day, like trust and people getting away with things they shouldn’t, to extreme circumstances.”
Osborn’s family moved to the area when he was three; his father, Andy, is a civil engineer who lives and works in Brooklyn, and his mother, Nancy, lives in Plainsboro and teaches English in Passaic. He has two sisters: Lizzy, 26, who also lives in LA; and Sarah, 17, a senior at High School North.
Osborn’s extracurricular activities at WWP included two years of soccer, but his primary interest even then was writing. He remembers WWP creative writing teachers John Anagbo and Rose Zimmer as some of his earliest influences: “Ms. Zimmer was great at nurturing writing, and Mr. Anagbo was so warm and positive.”
Osborn graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 2003 with a degree in communication arts. His writing partner, Amy Belasen, was full of stories of relationships, both successful and unsuccessful, during her time at McGill University. Osborn saw in these stories the potential for a novel.
Osborn is currently working on his second novel, which “echoes some of the themes” found in his first. Meanwhile, he continues his day job of waiting tables while advancing his literary career.
As with fellow WW-P alumni Bryan Singer and Chris McQuarrie, Osborn’s ultimate aspirations lie in film. “I’ve been working on scripts for the past five years now—from teen comedies to horrors. My ideal plan is to continue selling books for whatever genre, and to one day sell a script.” — Jonathan Elliott
