In the Unlikely Event...Judy Blume Wrote a Bad Book

It feels sacrilegious disparaging this book. Judy Blume is an icon and has been a very influential author, especially for young women readers. I didn't read her as a teen (gendered reading habits back then sadly) but I get that she broke ground, talking about taboo issues of female sexuality in ways that many young adult literature tended to avoid.

So when it was announced that Blume was releasing an adult novel this year and after Anne Kingman from Books on the Nightstand gave it a pretty glowing review I eagerly picked it up and looked forward to catching the Blume fever so many seem to have.

Sadly, this just isn't a very good book.

The premise is admittedly fascinating. The story takes place in early 1950s Elizabeth, a suburb of Newark, New Jersey. In the span of three months, three planes crashed into the largely residential town, killing passengers and residents alike. Blume recounts the events through the fictionalized eyes of the towns residents, who grapple with fear and confusion as the sky appears to be falling around them.

The most prominent narrator is Miri Ammerman, a 15 year old daughter of a single mother who deals witnesses the first tragedy and whose life is personally shaken by all three crashes. Blume also jumps to different perspectives, using more than a dozen townspeople's accounts to advance the plot. In addition to the back drop of the accidents, the story follows the intense dramas of various families as their pleasant and quiet suburban lives are pushed in unexpected directions as the fallout of the tragedies force people to make difficult decisions about what they want their lives to look like.

So much potential! And with a pro like Blume I really expected more. Instead I got a muddled story, filled with weak writing and tacked on adult situations to appeal to a mature audience.

Where to start:

1. This isn't an adult book. The writing style and themes are those traditionally falling under YA: young love, teen angst and friendships, awakening sexuality. While adult voices are featured, it is Miri who centres this novel and her story that is our focus. While Blume has probably included racier and more explicit sex than in her more traditional teen writing, this is now common parlance in the YA world. I have no issues with YA...it's a category filled with so many good books and I am jealous that there wasn't the breadth of reading choices available to me when I was a teen, BUT this book was pitched as an adult book, so I was expecting a bit more sophistication in plot and themes. Instead I got simple writing with the occasional sex scene.

2. The story is tedious. I found myself wanting the book to end and still had half of it left. The characters, aside from Miri, are pretty shallow and boring. Their desires so pedestrian. The last chapter, recounting a thirty year reunion after the crashes, comes up with so many cliche ways to tie up the loose ends.

In the end, Blume may just be a writer whose time has passed. What was edgy and groundbreaking thirty years ago feels banal and trite today. I am sure those who grew up devouring Blume's work will feel the nostalgia and enjoy this more than I, but as someone coming to her writing carte blanche I came away feeling disappointed and wondering what the big hype was about.

The Queen of the Bowery: Jami Attenberg's Saint Mazie

Jami Attenberg's The Middlesteins was a big hit a couple of years ago and like many others I powered through this family screwball comedy about life, food, love and whatever other crazy joke Attenberg used to make us fall for the dysfunctional family feeling the pull of economic and social displacement in modern America. So when it was announced that she was coming out with a new book this year I was excited and tried many times to win myself a copy on Goodreads giveaways. Sadly, my efforts were for naught.

Nonetheless, I got my hands on the audiobook version of Saint Mazie and took the plunge and what I got was something completely different! Inspired by a 1940s profile of Mazie Phillips Gordon from The New Yorker, Attenberg takes us through Mazie's life from the turn of the century until the beginning of the Second World War.

Mazie is the middle sister of a Jewish New England family. She and her younger sister, Genie, are rescued from an abusive household by their elder sister Rosie and her husband Lewis and taken to live in Manhattan. Mazie is a bit rebellious and sexually liberated, eager to live New York. Soon though she is forced to work at Lewis's movie theatre in the ticket booth, quickly becoming an icon to those filling up the theatre every day. Over the next three decades, Mazie tries to hold her family together through ups and downs, successes and tragedies, while also getting drawn into the cultural and historical events that Manhattan live through. Through all of this Mazie goes through an immense personal transformation, going from a flighty but ambitious young woman to stateswoman of the Bowery district who refused to close her theatre during the Great Depression and instead focused all her energies to provide financial and emotional solace to the homeless devestated by the economic collapse during the 1930s.

Structurally the story is told through Mazie's fictionalized diary entries, documentary style interviews of those who had known Mazie, and expert accounts from historians who were experts of the time period. Even though there are multiple story tellers, it is Mazie's voice that looms over this story. Her diary entries are filled with wit and attitude and when tragedy hits the emotion conveyed by her voice is intense and devastating.

I didn't "enjoy" Saint Mazie as much as The Middlesteins, the latter being much lighter and laugh-outloud material. While Attenberg's writing is still fresh with a tinge of humour, Mazie is a more serious and poignant story. Partly this may be Attenberg being more sensitive about writing about a real historical person, but it means that a reader has a very different experience than they did with her last book.

Nonetheless, Attenberg has given us an important work, one that touches on important themes and issues about women fighting through the ever changing urban experience in the first forty years of the 20th Century. It is also a novel that recognizes a figure that the historical record has largely ignored. It has also provide a visceral description of New York city life that potentially could let this book fit well into the pantheon of great New York novels.

All that said, this was an excellent book and I look forward to continuing to read the many books Attenberg certainly has left in her.

Here are some good interviews with Attenberg about Saint Mazie, including a hilarious conversation with Judy Blume.