From Booklist
Set in a wealthy suburb, where yards are "as green as the plastic grass from an Easter basket," McCandless' first novel is a hilarious, spot-on survey of the humiliations and perilous victories of a privileged adolescence. The story follows Emma Harris from her arrival in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, at 13 years of age through high-school graduation. Emma's first-person voice is an utterly convincing blend of self-absorption, detachment, and obsession over intricate social rules; her parent's divorce, for example, is almost a footnote in a chapter about Emma's plot to join the school ski club and win over a guy. Readers who were teens in the 1980s will recognize the cultural references, from the characters' Guess jeans to their Cure cassette tapes. Drawings from comics illustrator Christine Norrie capture the era, although the Archie-style is sometimes at odds with the tone of the words. But McCandless' wickedly funny descriptions and her unerring ear for teen dialogue will appeal to any reader who remembers, or is surviving, the stomach-twisting anxiety of becoming an adult. Gillian Engberg
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Review
Pam Houston author of Cowboys Are My Weakness Sarah Grace McCandless writes with humor and compassion and honesty about the most embarrassing time in all our lives, those terrible years between the first crush and the first orgasm. No matter which side of the tracks you come from, Grosse Pointe Girl will hit you where you live.
Joe Weisberg author of 10th Grade (an Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Book) Sarah Grace McCandless is a flat-out fantastic writer. Among her many gifts is an ability to combine laugh-out-loud humor with an unaffected, devastating sadness. The result is absolute magic -- the strange, beautiful truth about childhood revealed.
Review
Joe Weisberg author of 10th Grade (an Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Book) Sarah Grace McCandless is a flat-out fantastic writer. Among her many gifts is an ability to combine laugh-out-loud humor with an unaffected, devastating sadness. The result is absolute magic -- the strange, beautiful truth about childhood revealed.
Book Description
Welcome to Grosse Pointe, Michigan, where social rank is determined by the age of your money and the dryness of your martini. The new girl in town, Emma Harris, must prove herself hip to the rigid rules of adolescent conformity. The quest for cool, she discovers, is one long final exam. To pass she must be cruel to be kind (ditching her best friend for the popular crowd), dress to impress (trading her favorite Esprit shirt for three plastic bracelets), and master the art of seduction (puckering up with Mulberry Stain or Peaches 'n' Cream lip gloss). Life is all about making choices -- the right ones. Will Emma's social acrobatics put her on the short list for that coveted country club membership? Will the digits of her zip code pass muster? If her parents split up, will the gossip help or hurt her in the rankings? Grosse Pointe Girl serves as an indispensable road map through the dysfunction privilege brings. So put on your Guess? jeans and your jelly shoes and come along for the ride to the adolescent days that time forgot, but you never will.
Grosse Pointe Girl: Tales from a Suburban Adolescence FROM THE PUBLISHER
Welcome to Grosse Pointe, Michigan, where social rank is determined by the age of your money and the dryness of your martini.The new girl in town, Emma Harris, must prove herself hip to the rigid rules of adolescent conformity. The quest for cool, she discovers, is one long final exam. To pass she must be cruel to be kind (ditching her best friend for the popular crowd), dress to impress (trading her favorite Esprit shirt for three plastic bracelets), and master the art of seduction (puckering up with Mulberry Stain or Peaches 'n' Cream lip gloss). Life is all about making choices -- the right ones. Will Emma's social acrobatics put her on the short list for that coveted country club membership? Will the digits of her zip code pass muster? If her parents split up, will the gossip help or hurt her in the rankings? Grosse Pointe Girl serves as an indispensable road map through the dysfunction privilege brings. So put on your Guess? jeans and your jelly shoes and come along for the ride to the adolescent days that time forgot, but you never will.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Emma Harris arrives in suburban Grosse Point, MI, the summer before she enters the sixth grade. Over the next decade or so, she goes through typical adolescent rites of passage: surviving the embarrassment of getting her first bra, enduring unrequited crushes, betraying a friend, being a toady for the popular mean girls, adjusting to her parents' divorce, mourning the suicide of a classmate, and attending her first high school reunion. Emma's episodic reflections provide some shining moments, but as a whole, the book falls a bit flat. In particular, the reunion chapter drags as Emma tries too hard to be the cool cynic who has escaped bland suburbia for life in the big city. The drawings by comics illustrator Norrie give this first novel by the marketing director of Dark Horse Comics a young adult feel. Recommended for Midwestern libraries.-Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
First-novelist McCandless revisits-in loosely connected chapters-the cringe-making years of adolescent missteps and mistakes. Narrator and Everygirl Emma Harris is about to enter sixth grade the summer her family move up from an apartment to a house in tony Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She's soon best friends with neighbor Katrina, also a rising sixth grader. Katrina introduces her to the local landmarks-the department store, the ice-cream shop, and the drugstore-and helps her choose school clothes at the mall. The two are inseparable, but nothing lasts, especially in adolescence, and these tales are darker and more elegiac than the bouncy prose suggests. As Emma describes adjusting to middle school, being mortified by a popular boy, getting her first bra (embarrassingly ahead of the other girls) and her first period, her parents separate. Her father moves out; she and her mother have to find an apartment. Her friendship with Katrina, now more difficult to keep up, ruptures when a group of girls make insinuations about Katrina, and Emma, wanting to be popular, begins to ignore her. High school offers more challenges. Emma is attracted to Brian but insists on being friends because she fears losing those she loves. She loses her virginity to another boy. Emma and her friends go to parties where they drink too much and cross the river to nearby Canada with false IDs so they can drink in bars. A classmate commits suicide when rejected by Yale. The inevitable prom trauma-finding the dress and the date are equal chores-is followed by the almost anticlimactic graduation. At a reunion ten years later, Emma is drinking hard and Billy is still single. The drawings by comic-book illustrator ChristineNorrie underline the numbingly familiar nature of these experiences; combined with McCandless's shallow insights, they suggest the book would be more appropriately marketed as a YA title. A dispiriting reminder that youth is wasted on the young. Agent: Jenny Bent/Harvey Klinger
Art & Photography
Book Info
