| A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Gordon Korman |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Scholastic Trade |
| Publication date | August 1987 |
| Pages | 257 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-590-40694-9 |
A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag is a novel by Gordon Korman, a Canadian-born author who now lives in New York City.
The main characters are Raymond Jardine and Sean Delancy. Sean is a popular student, a starter on the high school basketball team. Raymond Jardine is the man with no luck and therefore is constantly scheming to get to the Greek Island Theamelpos that he calls "the luck place", in order to cure his absence of luck.
The plot of the novel revolves around Jardine bringing Sean Delancey, his English poetry project partner, into various schemes to ensure their arrival at Theamelpos for the summer. Along the way they encounter Ashley, a beautiful model who becomes the third member of their poetry project, and Cementhead (Steve Semenski), the luckiest student in the school, and help Sean's grandfather impersonate an 88-year-old deceased Canadian poet, Gavin Gunhold.
A sub-plot revolves around SACGEN (Solar Air Current GENerator), a government project that is supposed to power the school, using only wind power and solar energy. The school's central core was gutted to house the control room and the storage batteries. Since the project works poorly or not at all, causing frequent blackouts, the students refer to it as "The Windmill."