In Zanesville
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The fourteen-year-old narrator of IN ZANESVILLE is a late bloomer. She flies under the radar-a sidekick, 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 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, 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 overlooked often burns something radiant.
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The 1970's weren't the easiest time for a couple of 14 year old girls to grow up–just ask In Zanesville's unnamed narrator and her best friend. In this coming of age novel, we see the two of them deal with odd babysitting gigs, clothes, strange teachers, annoying/horrible family situations, self-awareness, friends, brushes with popularity, and (of course) boys at that awkward and vital time of life. Jo Ann Beard depicts their struggles, failures (and even a success or two) in a well-written (sometimes wonderfully so), moving way.
My problem with this book is that the narrative doesn't go anywhere, the narrator's story doesn't end, there's no conclusion, it just stops. I'm not sure the narrator comes of age, she rather comes right up to the border of it and looks across. That's more than dissatisfying, it ends up cheapening the whole experience.
Even so, Beard's writing makes In Zanesville worth the time.
