Starred review from March 7, 2011
Thirteen years after Beard's acclaimed essay collection, Boys of My Youth, she brings readers this smashing coming-of-age story. It's the 1970s and the novel's unnamed 14-year-old narrator is beginning high school after a summer spent in close company with her best friend, Felicia, as the two babysit an unruly set of six kids—the novel opens with one of the kids setting their house on fire. With freshman year comes realizations that many adolescent girls have faced, some overwhelming, some slight, but all spot-on: marching band is for dorks, boys are confusing, and even the tightest of friendships can fracture when popularity is at stake. Underlying this teenager's turmoil are problems in the grown-up world, such as her father's alcoholism, her mother's abiding unhappiness, and the death of a friend's mother—all things she tries to ignore, but which occasionally boil to the surface. Beard is a faultless chronicler of the young and hopeful; readers couldn't ask for a better guide for a trip through the wilds of adolescence.
March 1, 2011
Angst, and a grudging reconciliation to childhood being left behind, are the heart of this debut novel.
The narrator and her best friend, Felicia, began the summer before entering high school babysitting the six children of a biker gang couple, an occupation that ends morbidly when the husband holds the hand of a disobedient child over an open gas flame. After that display of brutality, the pair decide to quit, even though they need money to get their trendy freshman wardrobe out of lay-away. The bored and restless girls, residing in the prototypical 1970s mid-western small town, live in something less than a Happy Days environment. Both girls' mothers work too hard and yell too much. The narrator's father supposedly sells house siding, but he spends most days drinking vodka and watching birds and squirrels from the kitchen window, at least until he becomes drunk enough to yell "I'll say this about that!" in response to attempts at conversation. The third person narrator remains nameless, although readers learn she bears one of the names from Little Women. The author has beautifully captured how a shy but observant girl might interpret the awkwardness and the struggle for acceptance in the high school's perplexing social milieu. Beard also introduces a fine cast of minor characters. Much of the narrative is played off Felicia, anxious and uncertain herself, as the two girls attempt to participate in marching band, suffer and then seek detention, discover boys and confront mortality when the mother of an acquaintance dies. But it is Felicia, "eyes gone flat" when she walks off with a boy during a party, who provokes the narrator's revelation that even the sweetest childhood bonds can become flawed and fragile mature friendships.
This could be an instruction book for a perceptive teenager. For an adult, it resonates as a bittersweet remembrance of a time when life was more difficult than it should have been.
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
April 1, 2011
The Zanesville of the title is a small factory town in Illinois. While the cover graphics play with the overlap of "in zane" and "insane," this is not a story about mental illness. Instead, it's a fresh take on coming into one's own. At 14, Jo has always been a sidekick, moving happily in the orbit of her friend Felicia. Being a sidekick has its advantages--you get adventures without having to be the instigator. But their partnership is destined to be disrupted by cheerleaders and boys, and Jo, who always preferred Amy to Jo in Little Women, will be pushed from passivity to self-reliance. While the 1970s provides the backdrop, Beard (The Boys of My Youth) in her fiction debut makes the story both authentic and timeless. With clear prose she stacks individual events into a vivid narrative. From the opening scenes of a babysitting disaster through kitten-saving adventures and first passes at being noticed by boys, she captures the self-awareness and confusion of young women. VERDICT An engaging read for those who recall the 1970s and for anyone who remembers the borderlands between childhood and young adulthood.--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 15, 2011
Im sick of being a teenager, says the 14-year-old narrator in this moving coming-of-age novel set in the 1970s. So far the teen years of Beards nameless heroine, an everygirl from Zanesville, Illinois, have been filled with nameless longing; she felt plenty of that as a younger child, too, but this kind involves boys and cliques and comes with an extra layer of confusion. Her familya harried, brash, mother; a temperamental big sister; and a practically nonexistent little brotherstruggles financially while barely coping with her fathers pathetic drunkenness. Our heroine is a late bloomer, stuck being the almost inseparable sidekick to her best friend, Felicia. Then the girls find their social circle expanding, soon including the most popular kids in school. Betrayal follows, and the girls must find their way back to friendship. Beards hilarious, awkward, hyperreal dialogue drives the narrative, as slow-building squabbles morph into tense bursts of familial bickering. The 1970s setting allows for a slower-paced coming-of-age, but Beard travels the well-worn road of budding young womanhood with a surprising freshness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)