Pages: 287
Rating: PG mostly, but there is a smidge of language. Not a lot though.
Summary: The beguiling fourteen-year-old narrator of IN ZANESVILLE is a late bloomer. She is used to flying under the radar-a sidekick, a third wheel, a marching band dropout, a disastrous babysitter, the kind of girl whose Eureka moment is the discovery that "fudge" can't be said with an English accent.
Luckily, she has a best friend, a similarly undiscovered girl with whom she shares the everyday adventures of a 1970s American girlhood, incidents through which a world is revealed, and character is forged.
In time, their friendship is tested-- by their families' claims on them, by a clique of popular girls who stumble upon them as if they were found objects, and by the first, startling, subversive intimations of womanhood.
With dry wit and piercing observation, Jo Ann Beard shows us that in the seemingly quiet streets of America's innumerable Zanesvilles is a world of wonders, and that within the souls of the awkward and the overlooked often burns something radiant and unforgettable.
My Thoughts: This isn't really a novel I'll probably remember forever, but I will admit that it was interesting and the writing was excellent. Beard is one of those authors that can describe things so well that you're left thinking, "yes, it is like that" even if you never would have thought to describe it that way before. If you're really into coming of age novels, this is just another one of those. The thing for me is that nothing really happens in this book. There are some problems with her best friend because suddenly the popular girls want to hang out with one of them but not the other, but that's really all. They briefly experiment with boys, just kind of to see what it feels like. Mostly, it's just a series of the kind of events girls have to deal with growing up, and it's kind of funny watching this make her way through it. The way she expresses her trepidation of having to wear a bra someday cracked me up. "It's like being on your way to the Alps and knowing that when you get there you'll have to wear lederhosen."
One interesting fact about the book...they never tell you the name of the main character, although I was more than halfway through the book before I realized this. The closest I got was that she has the same name as one of the girls in Little Women, but she's not Amy. "Little Amy March grew up while no one was looking, wandered away from wherever it was they lived, and became an artist, while the one named after me had to stay and be in a worse book later." This wasn't enough of a clue for me, so if anyone else knows Little Women better than I do, let me know what this girl's name is because I was extremely curious by the end.
I will say I found the ending disappointing, but I was never disappointed while actually reading the book. I did enjoy it. The author does a wonderful job capturing the essence of a young teenager trying to figure out what it means to grow up, while still being afraid to leave childhood behind.
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