In Zanesville: A Novel

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.

It was very well written and nostalgic, and the characters are very relateable. It was quirky and funny and sweet. I was kind of sorry it ended where it did, and wished it had gone on longer. It was hard to let these characters go...I wanted to know what they were going to do next. This is a really cool, summer, beach, quick read!

I read it pretty quickly because it describes the early 1970’s, my teen years. It’s well written and fairly enjoyable, but there’s no climax: to put it in literary terms, no rise in plot action that leads to a solution to the central problem. She and her best friend had a tiff that was resolved, but that wasn’t enough.

I'm reading this book on Kindle and am fascinated from the perspective of a 12 year old girl in a rowdy town in Illinois telling about the crazy, dysfunctional neighbors she has to babysit. Her voice is clear and raw, her sentences are short and concise, without bogging down the narrative with extraneous pap. She tells it the way it is; her friendship with Felicia, her contact with the crazy and cruel biker couple; her yearning for a normal life full of shopping at the department stores and wishing she had the money to spend on niceties. This is powerful fiction from the mind of a 12 year old. There is solid character development, and all the odd, quirky neighbors serve as a delicious backdrop to the main story. I look forward to finishing the novel because I feel Beard has found her unique voice which is so rare in today's mass-produced fare of suspense and mystery novels.

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.

If I could write, this would have been my story. Really takes you back if you were a child of the 70's with parents who were doing their own thing. Funny, spot on, believable characters, great narrator (14 year old girl). I don't like to rehash plots, but if you remember your teen years in the 70's, you will like this, period. Beard has a direct, funny style; also check out her short stories along a similar vein called " Boys of my Youth". Great writer, one of those finds, a less acerbic female Augusten Burroughs.

This well-written novel kept me wholly engaged and the details / minutiae of the time period were spot on. If you were a girl coming of age in a smallish town during the '70s you'll enjoy this read.

Being born and raised in Z.O., I was disappointed when the book didn't address my memories. Very shallow and not interesting.

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