A frustratingly sentimental depiction of adolescence and American counterculture.
An adolescent girl comes of age in this nostalgic novel of 1970s Baltimore.
In the summer of 1975, nothing has stopped earnest 14-year-old Mary Jane Dillard from loyally accepting her strict Presbyterian mother’s beliefs about what it means to be a well-behaved young woman. Her familiar world turns upside down, however, when she begins nannying for the Cones, an unconventional family made up of Dr. Cone, a psychiatrist, Mrs. Cone, a housewife who—scandalously—doesn’t cook or clean, and Izzy, their winsome daughter. Mary Jane quickly becomes an integral component of the Cone household, not only taking care of Izzy, but also cooking and cleaning for the family. When Dr. Cone welcomes two top-secret guests—a rock star recovering from drug addiction and his movie-star wife—to the household, Mary Jane finds herself getting an unexpected but thrilling crash course in music, fame, sex, and the adult world…one that she’s inevitably forced to hide from her conservative parents. Blau paints an overly rosy picture of Mary Jane’s coming-of-age: Though the book nominally engages with weighty topics including addiction, adultery, and racism, it fails to seriously reckon with them or with the complex and often ugly history of America in the 1970s. The novel’s countercultural setting is, regrettably, mere window dressing. Though Mary Jane’s desire to escape her parents’ oppressive home is understandable, Blau never critically interrogates the Cones’ extreme openness, particularly about sex, which is also inappropriate given the fact that Mary Jane is only 14. With the exception of some clunky dialogue, Blau’s novel is readable and modestly entertaining, and readers nostalgic for the rock-and-roll scene of the '70s will likely enjoy its depiction of a wayward star, but it never dares to ask difficult questions.
A frustratingly sentimental depiction of adolescence and American counterculture.Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-305229-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Custom House/Morrow
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
For connoisseurs of speculative fiction who enjoy detailed worldbuilding.
In the near future, the world is run by WellCorp but all is far from well.
Stephens’ debut begins in “Zone 874, Pacific Ocean, 29 Days Post-Launch,” where we find one of our two heroines, Maggie, alone and afloat in a vessel called a WellPod, which is about to serve her a so-called latte made of mushrooms and root vegetables. "When Maggie could see the brown sludge that coated the bottom of the mug, she placed it back on the coaster, triggering its descent into the table at the same time her gratitude journal slid out from a lower compartment.” A passion for worldbuilding continues to drive this story of Lenses, Devices, Injectibles, Pohvees, WellNests, EarDrums, and much, much more as we go landside and meet Maggie’s live-in partner, Noa, who works at WellCorp’s Malibu campus, where she and Maggie have been assigned a high-tech apartment. With wildfires, earthquakes, and drought having wiped out most of the rest of California, volunteering for a Pod voyage was Maggie’s only option for getting out of town—and she really needs a break to figure out what to do about her unexpected pregnancy. Oops. In chapters dated by number of days pre- and post-launch, a complicated story unfolds. One has to do with corporate malfeasance and whistleblowing at WellCorp—were the Pods really ready to launch, and is there a major storm underway? Others involve infidelities and betrayals both past and present. It’s hard to keep up with which scary threat you’re supposed to be worrying about and which characters you’re rooting for—and the constant explanations and exposition dry up the juice. The novel is happiest when preparing and serving futuristic meals. “The hatch of her NutriStation opened and Maggie reached inside for her plate. The diagram projected through her Lens mapped out the baked coconut bacon, sun-yellow cherry tomatoes cooked in lab-grown avocado oil and coated in ancient grains aside tempeh topped with a dollop of collagen- and protein-fortified macadamia nut labneh.” Sounds better than the latte, anyway.
For connoisseurs of speculative fiction who enjoy detailed worldbuilding.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781668034316
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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