The first Nancy Drew book inspired my love for the teenage detective, but really I love the whole series. My mother drove me to the bookstore each time a new entry came out.
When I read this for the first time, I had the singular experience of feeling known. Never do I more enjoy a book than when it seems the author has peeked inside my head and assigned words to the thoughts and sensations I could not articulate.
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Marjorie, a 19-year-old Jewish girl, finds herself caught between her parents' world and the new world of fancy uptown Manhattan. Not only that, but despite her parents' desire for her to find the "right" job and the "right" man, what she really wants is to pursue a life in the theater. Spoiler alert: When Marjorie finally strikes out on her own, you'll be cheering for her right along with me.
I must have read this little-known book 10 times as a teenager. My copy's iridescent cover, showing a bikinied girl frolicking in the surf, didn't do justice to the resonant story inside. It didn't even depict the main character, a high school–age New Yorker forced to move to California with his parents. The backdrop of 1960s Southern California, with its surfer culture, Beach Boys music, and hints of political unrest, make this so much more than a great love story (and it's that too).
This memoir, about the author's tumultuous upbringing, reads more like fiction. Never self-pitying or angry, Walls describes her parents as creative and brilliant, but also at best negligent and at worst abusive. I've long admired Walls' unflinching honesty about subjects so personal.
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