In Zanesville: A Novel Paperback – Bargain Price, April 3, 2012

This novel has one major problem--the first person narrative that would never come from the head of a fourteen-year-old young woman, even the most precocious who has read a rather amazing number of novels, including Thomas Wolff. I am very surprised that a novelist who teaches writing at the undergraduate and/or graduate level would not have considered this major flaw: vocabulary and syntax that would only come from the head of a very skilled, adult writer, namely this novelist. Why did Jo Ann Beard not realize this? This could so easily have been written with the mature narrator, the one who looks back the way Harper Lee did with Jean Louise Finch (Scout) in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Did the author really believe that having the narrator and her buddy, Felicia, enjoying word play, i. e., flutile (futile) for flute. Sorry, but this is hardly enough to make this reader believe that this could possibly come from a fourteen-year-old. I laughed when somewhere in the middle of the novel, our narrator, we learn, is in gifted English. Apparently very, very gifted English.But setting that aside, the narrator and Felicia, living in the pre-iPod, Facebook, CD era, are really delightful girls living in typical dysfunctional households in everything-is-the-same-or-nearly-so neighborhoods called Zaneville, Illinois. The story opens with the girls babysitting six children whose parents ride motorcycles to and from work and who are, we soon discover, truly horrid parents. I won't divulge to what extent. And the girls do babysitting in hopes that a fast-growing pile of put-aside new clothes at the Style (a local store) can eventually be purchased. Of course even though the reader knows this will be impossible--and in this case from the most amazing fourteen-year-old writer ever--these two girls are convinced they will indeed raise the money.They bounce back and forth between their houses with mothers you will enjoy meeting--one never stops smoking--and a father who begins drinking early in the day, one of those passive men who dislikes his door-to-door salesman job. And then it's time for the school band--the John Deere High School band--to tune up with new uniforms. I won't tell you what happens. But it is very funny.Because I taught high school for decades, I can attest to this: these girls are very believable (as opposed to the lack of the narrator's verisimilitude). The girls find themselves involved with cheerleader types and a sleepover, with the the onset of menstruation, all the angst teens endure. Here is a sentence that captures what I suspect a majority of adolescents feel: "I'm sick of being a teenager. Being a teenager so far hasn't gotten me anything beyond period cramps and nameless yearning that has boys attached to it."And, yes, there is a plot although for most of the novel, one wonders if all of these pieces will actually lead to a conclusion that satisfies the reader.

The fourteen-year-old narrator takes readers along on a coming-of-age journey in 1970s Zanesville, Ohio.As the story unfolds, it's summer; she and her longtime best friend Felicia are full of high spirits as they cavort around town on their various adventures. Days, they have a regular babysitting job with a family full of horrors; nights, they usually sleep in Felicia's family's camper and run around the neighborhood after dark.Then when ninth grade begins, things suddenly start to shift. First the girls decide to quit band, which is bound to mark them as outcasts. Then, they get invited to a cheerleader's birthday party, where the two have vastly different experiences which lead them to start hanging out with different friends. Why is it so impossible at 14 to be friends with various groups? The narrator wishes she knew.Throughout it all, there is a background of tumultuous home life. Though the narrator's father's alcoholism and subsequent family stress is often mentioned - either outright or in details such as the three siblings eating cereal or Jello for supper when their stomachs are too upset - readers learn that friends and school are the narrator's main stability in life. Thus it's especially worrisome when that begins to fade.Beard's depictions of adolescence, as well as the gradual realization that the adults in one's life aren't all-knowing, are nearly painful in their accuracy.

Maybe I’m in the wrong demographic—older male from NYC— but I have read other coming of age books about teenage girls and found them much more readable and moving. Simply, this book is boring and essentially has no plot. The family interactions and insecurities of the main protagonist have been visited many times before in literature and film, and in a more entertaining way.

This novel depicts a small but significant shift: from the powerlessness of childhood toward the moment when power and decision-making and volition suddenly seem to come from the self, not from parents and teachers. The narrator's wry, eccentric observations are a constant delight, and the depiction of the narrator's mother is deeply familiar to me--a Midwestern woman who expects life to be filled with sacrifce, whose love is mixed with exasperation. I also loved the depiction of small town social class distinctions. In the wide world, a bunch of schoolgirls from Zanesville, Illinois have more in common than not. But within Zanesville the demarcations of privilege (or its lack) stand out: whose house is bigger and cleaner; whose father is more sober; whose clothes are new or culled from a box of cast-offs. If you loved Jo Ann Beard's *The Boys of my Youth,* and I did, reading this novel will make you want to reread *The Boys of my Youth,* which is one of my 10 favorite books of the last 50 years. And so I ordered it (I always seem to loan it out and never get it back) and reread it too. I am in awe of Jo Ann Beard's talent. Her books are smart, funny, companionable, her characters as recognizable as the people who inhabited my childhood and yet full of surprise.

I read the novel description and, as with every other new book, started out reading slowly, even reading out loud until the character voices came forward to be heard. A "coming of age" novel, but so much more than that . The young mc is lovable, frustrated, and intelligent. It's nearly a story of my own life, minus the alcoholic father. It falls into my favorite type of novel, the "quiet" novel. Every page is not a battle, but it flows along naturally with tension placed just so, moving the book forward at a comfortable pace. JoAnn Beard is now one of my favorite authors.

No one writes like Jo Ann Beard. So funny and sad and evocative and her sentences are beautiful. I loved it.