C. C. POINDEXTER

by Carolyn Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 9, 1978

C. C. Poindexter, going on 16, is almost 6'2"" and annoyed by all the comments she gets on her height; but Meyer doesn't make that into any big problem. In fact, C.C. usually seems more interested in the various adults in her life and in the changes they undergo in the course of the story: her favorite aunt, Charlotte, a militant feminist art teacher who tries to raise C.C.'s consciousness, finally takes up with a man (poet) and drops the fern lib sloagans; her father, who leaves home to do his thing, soon marries a woman--with kids of her own--who is less attractive than Mom; her mother, who's cast adrift by the divorce, ends up making a go of a fabric shop everyone had warned her against buying; and best friend Laura's seemingly stable parents split up, completely zapping Laura who had made a sort of hobby of chronicling other families' splits. As for C.C. herself, between sessions with Laura and Charlotte and Dad and her spoiled younger sister, all she really wants is to get away to the commune where Charlotte's son has settled--but she too changes, and by the end it's the previously well-programmed Laura who goes off to the commune while C.C. more or less gets it together helping out at her mother's shop. No dramatic or conclusive step forward for C.C., who's been sort of a passive observer all along--and no sharp social satire in the adults' contemporary floundering either--but C.C.'s observer role is a credible one, her own stability is refreshing, and Meyer never strays from C.C.'s frame of reference.

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION