Mary Jane, Jessica Anya Blau
The coming-of-age story continues to deliver in this tender tale by Jessica Anya Blau.
Mary Jane Dillard, a fresh teenager at thirteen, scores a summer nanny’s gig in her upscale Baltimore neighborhood. Her clients? The Cone family, who are Jewish (emphasis on the “ish”) and thus a rarity in 1970s Roland Park. Mary Jane’s own family is of a type that many who were raised in that era will recall: country-club WASPs — upper middle-class, domestically perfectionist, solidly church-going, and skeptical of human unlikeness, particularly as embodied in Baltimore’s Blacks and Jews. The Cones, by contrast, are bohemian, their home a disaster zone, with books, bottles, and dishware scattered on every surface and a refrigerator full of moldering, unidentifiable foodstuff. But the Cone home is one of unfettered spontaneity and overt affection, a contrast to the sterility of Mary Jane’s own homelife. Her charge, five-year-old Izzy, is smart, adventuresome, and loving. Mary Jane falls for the little girl and falls hard. Into this come Jimmy and Sheba, celebrities who move in with the Cones so that Dr. Cone, a psychologist, can treat Jimmy’s addiction. Unpredictability ensues, creating a volatile mix in which Mary Jane loves and feels loved, seen in a way she does not experience at home. The Dillards and Cones are antipodes between which Mary Jane must navigate even as she navigates her own sexual awakening, bringing order (and dependable nutrition…) to the Cone household while concealing its excesses from her parents. Ultimately, and within herself, she must find a way to reconcile the two.
Blau’s writing is breezy, propulsive, and inventive, and Baltimore in the 1970s, as rendered by her pen, is vividly imagined. But it is her big-hearted portrayal of a young girl managing the complexities of the adult world she must inhabit that captivates. The verdict? Read this one. Do.
Buy Mary Jane (out May 11) at your independent bookseller or from bookshop.org, an online retailer that donates part of its profit to independent booksellers. Let’s keep those local temples to love of literature alive and kicking!
