Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, novelist/drunken folk art collector Laura Lippman reads 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase', Joan Aiken’s 1962 novel in which two cousins pretty much kick ass all across England, with a little help from loyal retainers and some very brave geese.

After tea . . . the children were set to mending. The meal had consisted of bread, dry this time, and a cup of water. Sylvia had contrived to save a half of her morsel of bread for Bonnie, and she pushed it into Bonnie’s hand later, as they sat working in the biggest classroom, huddled together for warmth. This was the only time of the day they were allowed to talk to each other a little.

. . . “We can’t stay here, Sylvia.”
“No, we can’t,” breathed Sylvia in heartfelt agreement. “But how can we possibly get away? And where would we go?”
“I’ll think of some plan,” said Bonnie with invincible optimism. “And you think, too, Sylvia. Think for all you are worth.”
Sylvia nodded. Then she whispered, “Hush, Diana Brisket’s looking at us,” and bent her head over the enormous rent in the satin petticoat she was endeavoring to repair.”

Whenever I visit my parents — not often enough as they would be the first to tell you — I always end up thinking about Maude. Yes, that Maude. One of the many All in the Family spin-offs of the 1970s, Maude centered on an “uncompromising, enterprising, anything but tranquilizing ” woman from Tuckahoe, New York. (By the way, several Internet sources claim it’s “that old compromising,” which makes NO sense.) Route 404, which winds through Maryland and Delaware, skirts Tuckahoe State Park, so every time I come to that part of the trip — well, then there’s Maude.

And now that I’ve got the Maude song fizzing around in everyone else’s head — what was really so extraordinary about this outspoken-but-privileged woman? Yes, she was mouthy, and, yes, she had one of television’s first legal abortions, but her restless intelligence now seems wasted to me. Did Maude work outside the home, or even volunteer? (In the home, she had Florida to clean for her, at least until Florida got her spin-off.) What did she do other than battle with her husband and pal around with future Golden Girl roomie Rue McClanahan?

I had a better role model closer at hand. In 1969, three years before Maude debuted, my mother enrolled in graduate school, intent on becoming a children’s librarian. There are many, many wonderful benefits to having a mother who wants to be a children’s librarian – weekly trips to the big library downtown, reading all the Newbery Award winners together, even Gay-Neck, the Story of a Pigeon, God help us — but the thing that stands out for me was the wonder of my mother’s class project. Using knitting needles and index cards, she and a classmate created what can only be described as a non-computerized search engine. They notched the cards with a series of holes, some open at the top. The open holes corresponded to key search criteria – author, reading level, subject matter. With the help of a numeric code, you inserted the needles into the cards and lifted; the cards that fell out were the ones that matched your criteria.
I have been thinking about my mother’s class project because a chance re-encounter with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase convinced me that it is my personal platonic ideal of children’s literature, the card that would fall if I could set up a system controlling for all my favorite things in books:

Clothing
Orphans, real or de facto
Villains
England
Nature Boys, a la Dickon
Specialized Schools — a boarding school, a school for the performing arts, an orphanage or — the dream that I have yet to find — an orphanage devoted to the performing arts.

Of course, there are lots of satisfying books that score in only one or two categories. I adore Maud Hart Lovelace’s happy families, thanks to the detailed descriptions of Merry Widow hats, shirtwaists and jabots, but Deep Valley, Minnesota, is far from England. Elizabeth Enright’s four-book series about the Melendy family offers only tantalizing rumors of boarding school, and only in the final book. E. Nesbit come awfully close, especially if you’re willing to consider the Psammead [cq] a boy with a special connection to nature. (Hey, he lives in a sandpit, it’s harder to get much closer to nature than that.) Noel Streatfeild’s “shoe” books qualify, although she often softened her villains in the final act. Except for Mrs. Winter, mother of Dulcie in Dancing Shoes. Remember how she turns away, at the end, when Rachel is revealed to be the big talent in the family? Could someone please tell me why the adorable Uncle Tom is married to that woman? This has bothered me for years.
But The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is the gold standard, the ne plus ultra of the Lippman COVENS Rule. Throw in an opening that reads like the YA version of James Joyce’s The Dead and... oh, excuse me, I passed out briefly from ecstasy. Here, see for yourselves:

It was dusk, winter dusk. Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills, and icicles hung from the forest trees. Snow lay piled on the dark road across Willoughby Wold, but from dawn men had been clearing it with brooms and shovels. There were hundreds of them at work, wrapped in sacking because of the bitter cold, and keeping together in groups for fear of the wolves, grown savage and reckless from hunger.

And – damn you, Joan Aiken — it gets better. Chapter by chapter, event by event. Wolves has everything. A high-spirited rich girl (Bonnie Green), her virtuous poor relation (Sylvia Green), a tragic shipwreck, an evil governess, loyal retainers, an uncannily clever and gifted goose-tender, a horrible boarding school – run by Mrs. Brisket no less, who rewards snitches with little pieces of cheese. And I’m not even going to tell you how the geese foil a dastardly crime.
Aiken, the daughter of Conrad Aiken, is a brisk tour guide. “Do try to keep up,” she all but demands as the story steams along, “we have so much ground to cover.” Sylvia, an orphan (O!) has left her Aunt Jane in London (E!) to go stay with cousin Bonnie, who will be de facto parentless (O!) while Lord Willoughby and Lady Green take a voyage intended to mend Lady Green’s fragile health. Sylvia, genteel but poor, worries that her sole doll, Annabelle, will be humiliated by Bonnie’s dolls for wearing only a “funny little old pelisse!” (C!) Sharing her train compartment with an odd man named Grimshaw (V!), she also frets about her aunt’s very Victorian edict that she never eat in front of a stranger, difficult to do when a train ride takes almost two days. And in the middle of all these little girl anxieties, she has to deal with wolves, literal ones.

“[T]he train had stopped with a jerk. [Yes, his name is Mr. Grimshaw! Thank you, I’m here all week.]
‘Oh! What is it? Where are we?’ she exclaimed before she could stop herself.
“No need to alarm yourself, miss,’ said her companion, looking unavailingly out of the black square of window. ‘Wolves on the line, most likely – they often have trouble hereabouts.’
‘Wolves!’ Sylvia stared at him in terror.
“They don’t often get into the train, though,’ he added reassuringly. ‘Two years ago they managed to climb into the guard’s van and eat a pig, and once they got the engine driver – another had to be sent in a relief engine – but they don’t often eat a passenger, I promise you.’”

If Sylvia was reassured by the notion that the wolves don’t OFTEN eat passengers, she is much braver than I. Yet the wolves turn out to be among the more benign forces that threaten Sylvia and Bonnie in this book. Nature can be thwarted, it turns out. People are much more trickier.

Things sour quickly at Willoughby Manor. Miss Slighcarp (V!), the new governess — and a distant relation — is about as nice as one would expect, given that her name is Miss Slighcarp. She wastes no time trying on Lady Green’s clothes — including (swoon) “a rose-colored crepe with aiguillettes of diamonds on the shoulders. It did not fit her exactly.” (Nice bitchy aside there from meek little Sylvia.) Mr. Grimshaw, the mysterious man from Sylvia’s train, is skulking about, and no good ever came from skulking. Then news comes that the Willoughbys’ ship has sunk, and the girls are packed off quickly to the “boarding school” (S!) run by Mrs. Brisket (V!). The only coddled child in the place is Mrs. Brisket’s own Diana, a selfish brat, and there is a wonderful scene involving Bonnie, Diana and some fresh eggs, in which you will cheer because someone does NOT get slapped.

A quick aside about orphans: For me, the “O” is the central letter in COVENS. Why do I love them so much? It’s true, I was a latch-key kid, but my mother didn’t start working until I was in junior high, so I had the best of both worlds. The simple fact is that most children’s books benefit when some sort of contrivance whisks the parents offstage. It doesn’t have to be death (although there are a lot of dead moms in my favorite books) or a demanding job (lots of widowers, too, throwing themselves into their work since mom’s demise). An adults-only trip or troubling surgery (The Time Garden, Knight’s Castle) works just as well. And there’s always boarding school! (The Great Brain at the Academy, The Fog Comes in On Little Pig’s Feet, Apples Every Day.) But, of course, we don’t want them to stay parent-less. That would be much too bleak.

In Wolves, the real orphans finally receive much-deserved succor, while the hateful Diane Brisket finds herself quite alone in the world. Yet it is Aiken’s treatment of Diana, in the final act of comeuppances, that makes me love the novel even more.

The orphans, still dazed at their good fortune, sat at a table of their own, eating roast turkey and kindly averting their gaze from the pale cheeks and red eyes of Diana Brisket, who, having been in a position to bully and hector as much as she pleased, was now reduced to a state where she had not a friend to stand by her . . . Diana had nowhere to go and was forced, willy-nilly, to stay with the orphans (where, it may be said in passing, wholesome discipline and the example of Aunt Jane’s unselfish nature soon wrought an improvement in her character.)

You see, there are no bad children — only bad adults. Otis Spofford, Dulcie-Pulsie in Dancing Shoes, even The Bully of Barkham Street all have their sides to the story. But grown-ups? Grown-ups can really suck. Possibly because they did not receive a timely intervention from Aunt Jane. I would add that to COVENS – No bad children, only bad grown-ups – but it would screw up an acronym that took me, literally, hours to formulate. Please don’t tell my editor, who thinks I’m working on a novel. Oh, wait — like every other sentient female reader, she follows Fine Lines religiously. Damn.

• • • • •

No Plotfinder this week because I am trying to meet two deadlines by summer’s end. Also, I am much lazier than Lizzie. However, here’s a tip for those who love the YA novels written by Lenora Mattingly Weber from 1944-1972, the majority centering on stubborn Denver teenager Beany Malone. Every one of my Tess Monaghan novels has a Weber homage. The problem is, I have a terrible memory, soI forget what most of them are. One example: the law firm in my first series book, Baltimore Blues, is called the Triple O. Beanyphiles know that this is a reference to the hush-hush private club, On Our Own, in Beany Has a Secret Life. So if anyone ever finds themselves with A LOT of time to waste and an encyclopedic knowledge of Weber’s oeuvre, drop me a line via my website [www.lauralippman.com] when you find a Weber reference.

Laura Lippman has written thirteen novels, including the New York Times bestsellers “What the Dead Know” and “Another Thing to Fall.” A journalist for twenty years, she left the Baltimore Sun in 2001, back when it was still widely believed that the Internet was a fever that would break and all you crazy kids would eventually start reading newspapers like proper grown-ups. Oops! She lives in Baltimore. Her first collection of short stories, “Hardly Knew Her,” will be published in September.

The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase [Amazon]
Laura Lippman [LauraLippman.com]

Earlier: All Fine Lines Posts

[Jezebel]

It's time for another edition of 'Shelf Pleasuring', an occasional feature in which we revisit the sexiest books we stole off our parents' shelves when they weren't looking. Today, Fine Lines proprietrix, blogger, NPR book reviewer and filthy-novel-fiend Lizzie Skurnick writes about 'Wifey', Judy Blume's 1978 novel about having your cake...and getting it eaten out, too.

Can someone please explain this five-course, multiple orgasm thing to me? I don't mean this exact second, you can read the review first, but at the end of this exegesis I would like a few people to enter the comments and iterate the exact circumstances under which one would be able to claim one had enjoyed "Breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack." (I myself am not hungry, per se, but, having never been sure if I've personally taken part in the all-day buffet in question, I need to know if I should request a complimentary voucher or something.)

The source of the question in question is one Sandy Schaedal, a housewife in Plainfield, NJ, flush in the middle of late 1960s Jewish suburbia, wherein which the children of hardworking, Depression-era parents are suddenly experiencing all that club memberships, trips to the Bahamas, open marriages, and browned chicken from Elegant but Easy cookbooks can add to the quota of human happiness.

When we encounter Sandy, she's just recovered from a serious bout of classic debilitating housewife hysteria, and is at the end of her rope with her husband, Norm, the upright, uptight owner of a chain of a dry-cleaning stores. Norm is the kind of tidy husband who asks Sandy to keep track of his dog's "sticks" and "wees," likes his (browned) chicken on Wednesdays and his sex on Saturdays, and chooses to retire to his side of their twin beds every night, joined only by one headboard:

One bed for Norman, with cool, crisp sheets, preferably changed twice a week, not that he didn't want fresh ones daily...and one bed for Sandy, where, once a week, on Saturday nights, if she didn't have her period, they did it. A Jewish nyphomaniac. They fucked in her bed, then Norman went to the bedroom to wash his hands and penis, making Sandy feel dirty and ashamed. He'd climb into his own bed then, into his clean, cool sheets, and he'd fall asleep in seconds, never any tossing, turning, sighing. Never any need to cuddle, or laugh quietly with her. Three to five minutes from start to finish. She knew. She's watched the digital bedside clock often enough. Three to five minutes. Then he'd say, "Very nice, did you get your dessert?"

"Yes, thank you, dessert was fine."

....She's learned to come in minutes, seconds if she had to, and she almost always made it twice. No problem there. She almost always got her main course and her dessert. But usually it was a TV dinner and Oreo when she craved scampi and mousse au chocolat.

Conjured up like some priapic avatar of her most unseemly desires, Sandy has of late been haunted by an odd type of ghost, who conforms to his kind only in that he, too, sports a white sheet (hospital variety). Briefly, there is a man who drives up on her lawn with a motorcycle wearing a Stars and Stripes helmet who masturbates on the lawn, then departs with a wave. (Norm's comment after the first incident: "The motorcycle: Did it leave ridges in the lawn?")

Naturally, this cannot stand, but Sandy's life simply as the mother of two children, Jen and Bucky, who are now away at camp, has left room for the kind of whole rampant for over-examination, both mental and physical, that needs to find its outlet somewhere — which it has, in a raging itch that's taken over her nether regions. Asked by her brother-in-law, a gynecologist (no comment), about whether or not it might be psychosomatic, she replies, "I don't think I can discuss it with you, Gordon....I don't think I could discuss the subject at all."

Except, of course, with the reader:

My sex life? Oh, you mean my sex life. Yes. Well. Let's see. Ummmm, if you want to judge it strictly on the basis of orgasms it's fine. Terrific. That is, I masturbate like crazy, Gordon. You wouldn't believe how I masturbate. God, I'm always at it. Driving here, for instance, this morning....driving, get that, in traffic, no less....not, not the Cadillac, Norm took that to work. The Buick...driving the Buick...I hear this song on the radio...from my youth, Gordy, like when I was seventeen or something...Blue velvet, bluer than velvet was the night....it reminds me of Shep....and I get this feeling in my cunt....this really hot feeling....and just a little rubbing with one hand...just a little tickle, tickle on the outside on my clothes...just one-two-three and that's enough...I'm coming and I don't even want to come yet because it feels so good...I want it to last. And guess what, Gordy? I never itch after I come that way. I itch only after Norman. So, you see, it must have something to do with him. Maybe I am allergic to his semen...maybe I'm allergic to his cock...maybe I'm allergic to him!

But Sandy isn't only chafing at Norm, but her good-housewife place in the late-60s culture as a whole, which is erupting into all kind of nasty itchings and burnings, both racial and sexual. Unbeknownst to Norm, a stalwart member of the Young Republicans, Sandy has actually voted for Kennedy, for whom she sits shiveh to Norm's consternation, tossing sheets over the mirrors in the house. ("Jesus Christ, now you're going Orthodox?") When, at the urging of her traditionally good-looking, well-adjusted sister, Myra, the couple joins the area's exclusive Club, Norman immediately joins the Grievance Committee and kills on the tennis court while Sandy struggles through golf lessons, idly fantasizing about Roger, the club's golf pro and only black face on the scene, noting that the only part of the lesson she enjoys is when he stands behind her and wraps his arms around her to show her how to hold the club.

She also has very little in common with Myra's friends, who radiate health and wealth in equal proportions, in contrast with her sickly, uncoordinated, secretly sex-craving self. At one of Myra's parties, meeting her tennis-playing buddies, Sandy gets embroiled in a conversation about moving from increasingly black Plainfield to willfully white Watchung:

Sandy thought she might like Funky, with a bandana tied around her head, loaded down with Indian jewelry, best, until they got into a discussion about Plainfield.

"Plainfield, my God!" Funky said. "I thought Plainfield was all black."

"Not quite."

"You mean not yet! If I were you, I'd get out while the going's good and move up to the Hills....In Watching you could send them to public school. We have only two black families in town and both are professional."

"It's really not a racial thing," Brown said, joining them. "It's more of a socioeconomic thing, don't you think?"

"Yes and no," Funky said. "Yes, in the sense that professional ones tend to think more like us and want what's best for their children. No, in the sense that they're still different no matter how hard you try to pretend they're not. I mean, put one in this room, right now, and suddenly we'd all clam up." She took a cheese puff from the tray offered by Elena, the black maid. "Thank you."

Sandy is no social revolutionary, but she's also not particularly invested in her own upward mobility — and therefore not invested in keeping others down. She's not about to join the Black Panthers — her sense of injustice is far more internal, a mordant irony that she only expresses to herself. (Remembering how the one time Norman tried to give her oral sex he had to gargle with Listerine for a half an hour, she quips to herself, "That's why I douche with vinegar...cunt vinaigrette...to make it more appetizing...you know, like browned chicken.") However, in the days where feminism ("Women's libbers," to Norm, "Dykes who want to be on top") is located only in encounter groups in a Manhattan that may as well be 2000 miles instead of 20 minutes away, Sandy has only her fantasies to rebel with—until they slide, as it were, very easily into reality.

Her first affair is with her brother-in-law, Gordy, and not very much on purpose. At one of Myra's blowout parties, Sandy goes into a room to rest and finds herself assailed by a very drunk Gordy, who is endearingly straightforward: "I've always wanted you, Sandy....always loved your little ass....your cunt....every time I examine you I want it....want to kiss it...to fill it...." Her second is with Shep, the boy she didn't marry because her mother never thought he'd go anywhere. "You can't eat handsome!" Actually, Mother, you can, Sandy thinks, remembering:

Still, she dreamed of Shep. She dreamed of kissing him there and over midwinter vacation had a sudden urge to take him in her mouth. What was she going to do about these disgusting thoughts? Decent people, normal people, didn't do those things...didn't even think about them. Shep was perverted. But she let him do that to her. Just once. And oh, it was so good. Like nothing she had ever experienced. She came over and over, as he licked and kissed and buried his face in her. Until she cried, "Stop...please stop...I can't take any more..."

And then he kissed her face and she tasted herself on him. And she liked it.

Sandy's fantasies—and subsequent affairs—aren't because she's a nymphomaniac, but rather, because she's trying to resolve the two things about Norm she can't reconcile: his liking for the rigid class code of the club, and his liking for an equally rigid sex life, where his irritation with Sandy's needs, his inability to give love, leaves her, appropriately enough, irritated: ("Norman, do you love me?" "I'm here, aren't I?") Gordy, sister-in-law-fucker though he may be, is not a pervert — he's just as depressed with the code of the Club as Sandy is. ("You know something, Sandy, I hate this fucking house, this stupid party.") And though Sandy would like to convince herself that she would have had a very different life with Shep, she finally has to admit that it would have entailed the same things as her life with Norm — the Club, kids, car pools — and their same deadening effects.

The flap copy calls Sandy "a very nice housewife with a very dirty mind," but in fact, she's neither. Sandy, cosseted by a life of leisure that's become a straightjacket, buffeted by fucking on the brain, is very, very normal. "So where did things go wrong, Norm?" she thinks, lying in bed. "So what happened? Comfortable. Safe. We had our babies. We made a life together. But now I'm sick....And I'm so fucking scared!...Oh mother, dammit! Why did you bring me up to think this is what i wanted? And now that I know it's not, what I am I supposed to do about it?"

It would have been very easy to make Norm the enemy here, and, truthfully, the husband who rants about woman's libbers, who tells Sandy she doesn't know how good she has it, then responds to her entreaty that she could get a job with, "Your first duty is to make a home for me and the kids. After that, you want a little part-time job, it's fine with me" is grounds for massive enragement.

But after Sandy gets gonorrhea and has to tell Norman about her affairs, she finds a cache of letters written from an ex-girlfriend in the attic:

She had a sudden desire to call Brenda, to ask her what Norman had really been like way back then. Because she could see now that there must have been another Norman. A Norman who dreamed of becoming a biologist...of saving the world. A Norman who loved intensely. Could that Norman still be locked inside the Norman she knew, just as another Sandy was inside her, struggling to get out?

You bet your ass! In fact, America of 1970 is a nation of Norms, struggling to reconcile their golf shoes with riots in Newark. At age 8, I'd never noticed the epigraph to the book, a quote from Good Times by Peter Joseph. "In terms of affluence," It reads, "America in the 60s reached a stage that other societies can only dream of," it reads. It's no surprise that the mystery masturbator wears a Stars 'n Stripes helmet. Wifey isn't a novel of raunch — it's a novel about two Americas, the old 50s model and the long-haired, 70s edition that suddenly need to resolve Sandy's greatest complaint: "Paying isn't caring, Norman."

But, you know what? Caring is caring, and that's what Norman and Sandy find out they both do. Shattered by Sandy's betrayal, Norm doesn't throw her out but instead makes a surprising offer: "We could get a double bed. I know you've always wanted one." (He also agrees to try oral sex after being told by Sandy "I think you have to develop a taste for it, Norm, like lobster.") Surprisingly, Sandy hasn't gone mad on her bed in a room of yellow wallpaper. She's made several beds, and she's lain — not lied — in every single one. God Bless America.

Wifey [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]
Earlier: The Clan Of The Cave Bear: Where The Wild Things Are

To be sure, some of the books reviewed in Maslin's article are the bread and butter of the chick lit genre, like Lauren Weisberger's Chasing Harry Winston, with its "caipirinha-soaked" trio of materialistic harpies, she conceded. "But why do Birkin and Everything get thrown into the slush pile with the marriage-minded messes? And some of these books, despite their female friendly plots, must be better than others, mustn't they?" she wondered, pushing a lock of sun-bleached hair behind her ear. "So why are they all thrown into the same catch-all review?"

She toggled back to the front page of the books section and sighed deeply. Of the seventeen other articles on the books index, only two were about works written by women. Dejected, she crawled back into the fuchsia ghetto of the Styles section to read more stories about sunglasses.

On the Beach, Under A Tiffany-Blue Sky [NY Times]
Bringing Home Birkin [Amazon]
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything [Amazon]

It was the decision to do something, to get myself out of the rut I was in. I had had enough and was supremely unhappy. You get advice from everybody anyway, why not women's magazines? It would have been great to live in Italy and Indonesia and India for a year, like Eat Pray Love, but I spent $144 on my subscriptions. It was an affordable, doable and really relatable idea. Magazines have millions of subscribers and I think there's a real common thread for the women reading them, which is the sense of possibility.

And she's right! Without Allure, we would not know how to shower. Without Glamour, we would not know how best to sexually harraass a coworker and shag him on a desk. Without Elle, we'd never know that $5,000 bags are for hiding genitalia. Without Marie Claire, we'd never know that high noon in the desert is an appropriate place for a $13,000 evening gown. Thanks, magazines! And congrats, Cathy. You actually seemed really happy on the Today show this morning. But just so we're clear: The message is not that women's magazines saved your life, but that deciding to save your life saved your life, right?

How 365 Days Of Cosmo Advice Saved My Life [Globe And Mail]

Look, I'm not going to say my Anne doesn't have her flaws. On the other hand (and I'll admit, this might be my public school education or my age showing), I don't remember reading anything Louisa May Alcott or Noel Streatfeild as part of a reading curriculum, either. Most of what I remember about books in school is that when they were written by women about women or girls, they were modern-day books. But there were plenty of historical books — Twain being a good example — that we were expected to read along with Judy Blume.

Anyway, not that I didn't devour nearly everything by all of those authors (and more) on my own, but it seems to me that plenty of girls could stand a little more Anne in their lives, even if they don't know it yet. Personally, my full set had better still be in a box in my closet when I get home, or my mom is gonna owe me some book money.

100 Candles [Slate]

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'Happy Endings Are All Alike', the 1978 Sandra Scoppettone novel about two young lesbians who want to be together in the worst way.

Sometime around the invention of email, slowly drifting into cubicle death, I sent the following email to a high school friend I hadn't spoken to in years:

Hils, What's the name of the book where there are two lesbians and the girl gets raped under a tree? Not My Sweet Audrina. There are two girls on the cover. How are you?
Lizzie

The friend in question did not even bother to respond to the perfunctory closing query. Addressing only the former, she zinged back simply:

HAPPY ENDINGS ARE ALL ALIKE!!!!!

Such is the power of this novel, which I had borrowed from the friend in question for months until I was forced to finally return it, then commenced idly thinking about roughly every three days since. It wasn't only that there were lesbians, or rape, or pretty girls in polo tees with shiny hair on the cover who I might grow up to look like. It was that, like so much of the work of Paula Danziger or Paul Zindel, it presaged a world for us filled with more than gym teachers hurling basketballs at us (see Plotfinder), alive with teenagers struggling with the new complexity of adult relationships—one in which gym teachers, lesbian or no, weren't anywhere near the center of the drama.

I'd like to provide the nut graf for Happy Endings Are All Alike, but Scoppettone's first paragraph does it so admirably it seems a shame to mess with it:

Even though Jaret Tyler had no guilt or shame about her love affair with Peggy Danziger she knew there were plenty of people in this world who would put it down. Especially in a small town like Gardener's Point, a hundred miles from New York City. She and Peggy didn't go around wearing banners, but there were some people who knew.

Considering the hullabaloo about teenage sex—ANY kind of teenaged sex—nowadays, pretty much every sentence of that paragraph is mind-blowing. But remember, this is the fictional world 1978, where parents might mention Susan Brownmiller as quickly as they asked you to set the table. Castigated by her sister, Peggy thinks resentfully to herself, "You weren't a pervert just because you loved someone of your own sex, for God's sake!" And, as the preternaturally well-adjusted Jaret puts it to said mother: "Look, I know where you're coming from, Mom, but don't let it freak you out. I'll tell you this: Whatever I did with boys I found really boring. I didn't get turned on, okay?....And it's got nothing to do with you and Dad. I mean, you didn't make some terrible mistake in raising me or anything. And it's not so terrible. In fact, it's pretty nice. So don't lay a guilt trip on yourself, okay?" Okay! And don't forget the napkins!

But just because Peggy and Jaret — and, nominally, their semi-informed families — are not completely up in arms about their relationship, it doesn't mean they are off the hook entirely. The ancillary characters are brought in to project the basic prejudices of their time— a narrative conceit that might seem clumsy in an adult novel but it, be-LIEVE me, provided crucial info for an eight year old girl.

First to hold a nasty grudge at the girls' love is Peggy's sister Claire, who is jealous not only of her sister's favor with their father but her looks:

She lit another cigarette, sending up a smoke screen between herself and the mirror. Again her mind fixed on Peggy and Jaret. Both of them were attractive. Jaret might even be considered beautiful. Dammit, she was beautiful...by male standards, she was a knockout. And that was what really made Claire crazy. Jaret Tyler could have had any boy or man she wanted and she wanted none. Peggy, too, could have had her pick. And who did they choose? Each other. It was sick. Crazy. Enraging. Why, when they could have the cream of the crop, did they want each other?

Okay, first lesson—people think if you're a good-looking, not getting with a man is a waste. Lies! Check. Scoppettone's second lesson: Not all heterosexual relationships are happy, or free of complication—but that doesn't mean married women are all oppressed. Jaret's parents are a case in point: While Kay, her mother, muses her husband is madly in love with her, she thinks with irritation how she's truly invested in his looks, even if she allows him to think it's the other way around:

He often accused her of regarding him as nothing more than a sex object and she had a hard time denying it. "Well, kid," she often said, "I can't help it if you're a looker." "What about my mind?" he'd ask. Kay would shrug and say, "Who needs it?"

Of course, she didn't really mean it. She just said it to keep Bert aware of the way women were treated. And he knew that. What he didn't know what that Kay was not overwhelmed by his mind.

Kay is an interesting character—an aggressively liberated Mom who is deeply disturbed at how disturbed she is about her daughter's new relationship:

She lit a fresh cigarette. [If you're thinking of lesbians, grab a smoke.] Kay had read everything she could find on the subject of homosexuality and lesbianism and what she'd read wasn't that helpful. There were many theories as to why a person turned out to be a lesbian—environment, chromosomes, choice—and a lot of big, fat blanks. No one really seemed to know. Nevertheless, Kay couldn't help blaming herself and Bert. But why blame? Why the need to put it in those terms? She knew it was because she still had one foot in the fifties and a lesbian life-style was not what she'd had in mind for her daughter; it was not something she could fully accept as normal, no matter how liberated she might be

Oh, what a fraud she was! Pretending to Jaret is was all fine with her, simply swell, because she wanted Jaret to like her, to think she was cool! What she really wanted to do was throw herself at her feet and beg her to see a psychiatrist so she'd get over this thing.

Equally equivocating is Peggy's friend Bianca, who reacts to the news with blase sophistication until one day Peggy, chatting with her in the bedroom, tells her sweating friend to take off her clothes, then is shocked and appalled to realize she thinks she's hitting on her:

"Besides," said Peggy, "do you think I'm interested in all females?"

"I thought...I don't know," she said, somewhat ashamed.

"No, I guess you don't. I thought you understood. I mean, are you interested in every guy you see?"

This was not only a revolutionary piece of transitory logic to a third-grader, but also a good schooling in the minor injustices visited on people who are different by well-meaning people, particularly (primarily!) their own friends. But if the emotional travails of their friends and family were the only ones in store for the girls, this would be a fairy story, not a political coming-of-age. There are deeper dangers in a character named Mid, a friend of Jaret's brother Chris and no less disturbing for being stereotypically disturbed. Musing he'd like to "knock [Jaret] on her ass" for being so good-looking and aloof, he stalks her and finds out that she and Peggy have been making love in the woods. Not realizing Peggy and Jaret's rareifed world is only agonized about their girls' predilections, not apt to disown them for them, he decides he can rape her with impunity.

The rape scene is long and awful and I APOLOGIZE for their being like 88 rape scenes in these columns lately. But the introduction of sex to girls, however it is rendered, is such a constant trope in the novels, it is instructive to think of how it's handled by the character—in this case, Jaret, who is shocked and destroyed, though not permanently—and by the author, whose scene is neither maudlin nor lurid, but simply chilling:

"I hate your guts," he whispered.

Why then? she wondered apathetically. His movement continued. Her head was turned to the side. Breathing became difficult. Month after month passed. Staring at the landscape, she wondered why the seasons didn't change. Where was the snow? She longed for snow, cool, white. Snow would stop the burning inside. She felt her body rock as Mid's movements quickened. Would she break apart? Explode into pieces of flesh, bone, blood, flying through the air, sticking to trees, bushes?

Was 8—or anything but 18, for that matter—too young to be exposed to this kind of thing? As horrifying as it was, I don't think so. The early exposure to injustice from someone on Jaret's side absolutely is a powerful tonic to defend against the crappy justice system the reader is going to grow into. The sheriff Jaret has to deal with after the rape is cut from the same cloth as Are You in the House Alone's awful lawman, and as awful to watch as the parents who stand up for their girls are a relief:

"What's the name of her boyfriend?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Kay asked.

"Pardon?" said Foster.

"Why do you want to know about a boyfriend? She was horribly beaten. It has nothing to do with a boyfriend."

"Pardon, Mrs.," Foster said, "but you're out of your element here, so to speak. The girl was raped and we have to find the perpetrator. Now, please, let me do my job."

"This is a crime of violence," Kay went on, "not a sexual one."

Foster cacled, took a swipe at his nose with thumb and forefinger. "Well, if rape ain't sexual then I don't know what it is."

"Well, I have news for you," Kay persisted, her voice rising. "It ain't sexual. It's aggressive and it's violent and it's based on hatred of women, not desire for them."

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH DON'T YOU WANT TO KILL HIM! (Just wait until he gets to the part later about how it didn't matter that Jaret was raped because a) she's not a virgin and b) she's a lesbian.) So, say what you will about early exposure, but it definitely gave you your feminist talking points—of which I have personally amassed a very large collection ever since.

But—despite these handy fillips—what's wonderful about Happy Endings Are All Alike is how it chooses to not devolve into a paroxysm of blame. Not only is Jaret's lesbianism not Kay's fault—it's not a fault—but it or the rape doesn't turn Jaret bitter against men, which is another prejudice Scoppettone uses the book to debunk. After Jaret's brother, Chris, beats up Mid, he realizes it was unnecessary:

"Chris, you know, we never talked about what you did that day. Going after Mid like that."

"What's to talk about?"

"Why'd you do it?"

"What d'you mean? He hurt you, I wanted to hurt him. Simple." He looked past her shoulder.

"Is that the only reason?"

"Sure, what else?"

"I don't know." She touched his hand. "Are you angry with me? Do you hate me?"

He was shocked, sat up. "Me? Hate you? No. I thought....I mean, wow....I thought you hated me."

"Why?" she asked, dumbfounded.

"Well, I'm a....a guy."

"I don't hate men, Chris."

"You don't? Then how come....I mean, you come you're a...."

"A lesbian? It's not such a terrible word. I'm not sure why but it definitely isn't because I hate men."

"Not even after what happened?"

"No. I'm angry with him, Mid, but not all men. Not you."

"I thought for sure"—he cleared his throat—"lesbians hated men."

"Well, we don't. But what's that got to do with you going after Mid? And don't tell me it was just because he hurt me because I won't buy it."

Christ stood up, shuffled back and forth at the end of the bed. Then he said, "I thought if you saw a guy do something good, you know, kind of breave....well, I thought maybe you wouldn't think all guys were so bad."

"Oh, Chris." Jaret loved him more then than she ever had.

I started this review talking about how this book was brain-searing simply for its depiction of an adult romantic relationships, and I think that's true, for an eight-year-old read. But what I find so interesting as an adult is not the depiction of the romantic relationship, which, happily, seems very normal to me now, or the depiction of the rape, which, unhappily, also does, but what passes between all the family members once Jaret and Peggy come clean, and then when Jaret is assaulted. Both are huge bombs dropped on the people who love them, but Instead of making the family and friends betray the girls, Scoppettone instead deals with the ways they feel they are—and especially why they feel they are. No family members, including Peggy and Jaret, are at fault for anything. That's a good lesson to know. But, in a novel where all of the relationships are as complex as Peggy and Jaret's love, it's nice to know that, in one author's view, family is not a fault.

• • • • •

Guys, I am sorry the columns of late have been SO RAPE-Y! Seriously, no mas. Stranger With My Face has bodily invasion but no raping, and I am assured The Wolves of Willoughby Chase has neither. Whew!

Moving right along, Australia/France or no, once again you Plotfinders (that's a designation and an appellation) pulled through! The solution was Hating Allison Ashley, and the winner, by email, was one un-hateable Andria A. Andria, write me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com to claim your prize of the choice of one column.

This week's Plotfinder comes from reader Patricia C., and is the last misery I will do before embarking on a summer of happy happy happy:

a teen whose parents own a gym
gets pregnant
her father actually tries to get her to miscarry by throwing one of those gym balls at her hard
she leaves home
gets forced into prostitution after having her baby
i'm guessing it gets worse for her (how can that be?)
so she goes back home to the gym leaves her baby on the floor and drowns herself in the hot tub.

Our gym teacher really did throw gym balls—HARD—at us, but just because this was the days before they made them stop doing that kind of thing. I will not throw anything at you if you guess this incorrectly. Answers in the comments or by email to jezziefinelines@gmail.com, and fame and fortune to the first in.

For your reading information, next week is Lois Duncan's...

Stranger With My Face

and the following week the marvelous Laura Lippman guesting with...

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase!

I haven't yet decided on where we'll be after that. I have all of your WONDROUS suggestions, but if you want to really really get me when I'm vulnerable, be all vociferous and shit for your desired work, and I will probably be swayed. As ever, send your requests, valedictions and remonstrations to jezziefinelines@gmail.com.

Also, you may have heard: There is to be a book! Do you want to read all about it? Do you have a better title for me than "Read All About It"? Fantastic! To be on the mailing list for any events and news regarding the upcoming creation, send me an email to jezziefinelines@gmail.com with the words I'LL HELP YOU THINK OF A TITLE in the subject line and I'll put you on it.

(One last thing: here is one commenter who has asked several times if anyone has heard of Constance C. Greene's Beat the Turtle Drum and remained unanswered. I can't stand to let anyone wander in the wilderness this way. Reader: I read it. It was one of my faves, too, and I will try to get it into the column soon.)

Happy Endings Are All Alike [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier: The Pigman: A Day No Friends Would Die
•Julie Of The Wolves: The Call Of The Wild
• Deenie: Brace Yourself
•A Wrinkle In Time: Quit Tesseracting Up
•Love Is One Of The Choices: No, Not That 'Sex And The City'
•The Girl With The Silver Eyes: Little Pitchers Have Big Pharma
•Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself: Springtime For Hitler, Part II
•Summer Of My German Soldier: Springtime For Hitler, Part I
•From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: City Of Angels
•A Gift Of Magic: Totally Psyched
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
•The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What A Missel Thrush Is
•To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie: No Telephone To Child Services
•The Westing Game: Partners In Crime
• The Moon By Night: Travels With Vicky
•My Sweet Audrina: The Book Of Sister And Forgetting
•The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty
•The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits
•The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!
•Are You In The House Alone? One Out Of Four, Maybe More
•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week
• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die

Please, give a warm, wet welcome to Shelf Pleasuring, an occasional feature where we give a looky-loo at the books we stole off your parents' shelves when they weren't looking. For our inaugural column, Fine Lines proprietrix, blogger, NPR book reviewer and filthy-novel-fiend Lizzie Skurnick looks again at Jean M. Auel's 1980 novel The Clan of the Cave Bear, where young Ayla (it's AY-la, not EYE-la, I looked it up) learns that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens do a lot more around the fire than roast aurochs.

Somewhere around my 80th reading of By the Shores of Silver Lake, I halted on a scene that, after waxing rhapsodic on sparkling glass panes wrapped in brown paper and a clean-smelling, yellow pine floor freshly scoured with sand, lingered inordinately on the matter of the new straw ticking for Ma and Pa's bed. The cause of the halt was the revelation that, though it was placed behind a curtain, the bed was crowded in the room with not only the coal stove freshly covered with blacking and the brindle bulldog, Jack, but three daughters all blessed with perfect hearing, crackling on their own straw ticking. By this point in the scene, Ma had sunk, sighing with pleasure, into her new bed and was pronouncing it divine. "Mom," I asked (my Mom was good about stuff like this) "MOM. Do you think they had sex that night?"

"Oh, absolutely!" my mother said. (Told you she was good about stuff like this.)

It's unsurprising that a series that engages so profoundly with the sensual in the ordinary life—butter thickly clotting, fish violently flopping, cotton palpably stiffening—might at some point arouse in the young reader the revelation that its characters were probably clotting, flopping and stiffening along with their visual accoutrement, but obviously, Wilder was unable, for numerous reasons, moral and cultural, to really follow through on this. And that's where authors like Jean M. Auel come in.

The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first of the "Earth's Children" quartet, is the story of Ayla, a four-year-old Homo sapien girl who, after a dreadful earthquake, loses her family and almost dies, until she is rescued by the Neanderthal medicine woman, Iza, one of the Clan of the Cave Bear. On a line-by-line, chapter-by-chapter view, The Clan of the Cave Bear is the pinnacle of dawn-of-mankind porn—leather thongs, bison, chewed roots, cozy fires over the hearth—with a riot of detailed explication that makes the simple butter-churning passages of Wilder look like a phone book. (When you launch with a taxonomy of the different fibers used to absorb baby shit, you win by default immediately.) However, on a large scale, The Clan of the Cave Bear is much more: a novel of a dying breed set up against a new one, but, more important, how gender relations lie at the heart of this changing world.

And Ayla, a gangly, blonde, sky-eyed child stuck with the wrong race, is the avatar for all this tumult. Auel immediately makes us aware of the lowly position of women in the Clan: Iza has to kneel before Brun, the leader—as all women do when approaching a man—to plead her case about keeping the girl. While thinking it over, he ruminates, "But medicine woman or not, she's just a woman. What difference will it make if she's upset?" which pretty much sums up the position of women in the clan, who walk softly and carry sticks to dig roots while the men carry big spears and can beat them, have sex with them or treat them equally, as they choose.

Auel's position on all this is not to condemn entirely, as she explains that the Neanderthals lack of capacity for change, which allows them to retain the memory of the entire race in one person, is also how nature has decided to let them survive. Men hunt because they always hunted, women know roots because they always did, and it's awesome because you don't have to reinvent the wheel — which in fact hasn't been invented at all — every time a new generation is born.

But Ayla upsets this whole apple cart. Apparently, the Others — the Clan's name for the Homo sapiens new on the scene — are different. The Mog-Ur, the great spiritual leader, Iza's brother and eventually recalls how an Other man that lived with them once was different — he liked to talk to men and women, and had great respect for the medicine woman, on par with that for the men. First off, Ayla, mauled by a cave lion, has the totem of that powerful beast, which makes the tribe worry that she can't have children, since "they would fight off the impregnating essence" of a man with a weaker totem. (Plan T!) She quickly surpasses Mog-Ur in simple math when he decides to show her number one day. She sees the men playing with slingshots and learns to hunt, a crime punishable by death to the Clan. And, over and over again, because she has been lucky for the Clan, she is forgiven these crimes and they are incorporated into their lives—to the head-splitting rage of the tribe leader's son, Broud.

BROUD! Omigod, BROUD! There's just no way anyone good is named Broud. Spoiled, swaggering, petulant and, you know, proud, braggart Broud has hated Ayla ever since she stole his thunder at his first hunt ceremony by being given the cave lion totem. The more of a man's rights she is given, the more enraged Broud is — especially as the elders of the Clan respect her increasing worth to the tribe as both a hunter and skilled medicine woman as much as or more as they respect him.

And here's where the sex comes in! I don't have to tell you, all the sexual stuff in The Clan of the Cave Bear is kind of horribs, since Auel, in this first work, hasn't quite yet realized she can have fun with the sex stuff too, as she did in the epic all-Homo sapien 20-page sex scene where Ayla loses her "virginity" (more on that in a sec) to Jondular in Valley of the Horses or all the fur-covered rutting and breast-baring happening in The Mammoth Hunters, where Ayla is torn between Jondular and Ranec, a kind of Paleolithic Obama with ties to both Africa and Asia, insofar as those land-masses were happening. And the ladies with red-tinged feet, who are high slatterns of the temple. ANYWAY!

Most horribly, and most pertinently, Ayla is brought low just as she's reached the crest of her status in the tribe and her sexual development:

The Woman Who Hunts earned the full title during the winter that began her tenth year. Iza felt a private satisfaction and a small sense of relief when she noticed the changes in the girl that heralded the onset of menarche. Ayla's spreading hips and the two bumps swelling her chest, changing the contours of her child's straight body, assured the medicine woman that her unusual daughter was not doomed to a life in permanent childhood after all. Swelling nipples and a light sprinkling of pubic and underarm hair were followed by Ayla's first menstrual flow; the first time the spirit of her totem battled with another.

Ayla understood now that it was unlikely she would ever give birth; her totem was too strong...

Not so fast, Ayla. Unfortunately, babies are not actually made by the battling of random tribe totems, but you're going to figure that out anyway, because you're a Homo sapien and your brain is capable of intuitive leaps based on observable data, but anyway. Broud? You were saying?

He looked around, the down at the woman sitting at his feet, waiting with unruffled composure for him to get on with his rebuke and be on his way. She's worse than ever since she became a Woman, he thought....What can I make her do?....Wait, she's a woman now, isn't she? There's something I can make her do.

Broud gave her a signal, and Ayla's eyes flew open. It was unexpected. Iza told her men only wanted that from women they considered attractive; she knew Broud thought she was ugly....He signaled her again, imperiously, to assume the position so he could relieve his needs, the position for sexual intercourse...

Ayla knew what was expected...Many young girls of the Clan were pierced by pubescent boys who lingered in the limbo of not-yet-men, before their first kill; and occasionally a man, beguiled by a young coquette pleased himself with a not-quite-ripe female...Within a society that indulged in sex as naturally as they breahted, Ayla was still a virgin.

The young woman felt awkward; she knew she must comply, but she was flustered and Broud was enjoying it. He was glad he had thought of it; he had finally broken down her defenses. It excited him to see her so confused and bewildered, and aroused him...

Broud got impatient, pushed her down, and moved aside his wrap exposing his organ, thick and throbbing...She's so ugly, she should be honored, no other man would have her, he thought angrily, grabbing at his wrap to move it out of the way as his need grew....

But as Broud closed in on her, something snapped. She couldn't do it! She just couldn't. Her reason left her. It didn't matter that she was supposed to obey him. She scrambled to her feet and started to run. Broud was too quick for her. He grabbed her, pushed her down, and punched her in the face, cutting her lip with his hard fist. He was beginning to enjoy this. Too many times had he restrained himself when he wanted to beat her, but there was no one to stop him here. And he had justifiable reason—she was disobeying him, actively disobeying him...

She was nearly unconscious when he threw her over on her face, feverishly ripped her wrap aside, and spread her legs. With one hard thrust, he penetrated deeply. She screamed with pain. It added to his pleasure. He lunged again, drawing forth another painful cry, then again, and again. The intensity of his excitement urged him on, rising quickly to unbearable peaks. With a last hard drive that extracted a final agonized scream, he ejected his built up heat.

Well! Smell you, Nancy Drew! That is where Dawn-of-mankind porn slips right into PORN, I guess—which is probably a good 85% of why THIS STUFF IS COMPLETELY ADDICTING. (You don't really get any kinkier than human/Neanderthal sex.) But I do think you can differentiate the books from other fur-wrap-rippers by the fact that The Clan of the Cave Bear is not only about some overheated welter where both the earth and the beings upon it rumble with ecstasy and agony and split on a regular basis. On a fundamental level, it's about sex not for sex's sake but for how it interacts with our lives — how Ayla suffers to keep the baby that results from Broud's raping her and her status as hunter as medicine woman, and how, in the next few novels, she strives to find a partner not only of her own kind, but of her own kind—an equal partner that appreciates Ayla the species and Ayla the woman. As the novel ends, Brun berates Broud for having brought chaos and dishonor to the Clan by his treatment of Ayla: "She was a woman, and she had more courage than you, Broud, more determination, more self-control. She was more man that you are. Ayla should have been the son of my mate." Doesn't quite have the ring of "Like a fish needs a bicycle," but a good Dawn-of-Mankind start nonetheless.

Related: The Clan Of The Cave Bear [Amazon]

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads Paul Zindel's 1969 novel 'The Pigman', in which two teens, John and Lorraine, discover that life is no day at the zoo.

Now, I don't like school, which is what you might say is one of the factors that got us involved with this old guy we nicknamed the Pigman. Actually, I hate school, but then most of the time I hate everything.

I'm glad nowadays that therapists and Masters-in-teaching programs are here to minister to the maladjusted amongst us, but I'm not sure I love what they've done for literature. It's not that the notion of the dysfunctional family has disappeared — obviously we are beset by a new indie film about the crushing complexity of family life set to a charming soundtrack every other week. (I just can't trust any work of art that reverts to the profile of a teen lying upon a bed and a guitar riff as any kind of a gesture towards plot.) But Paul Zindel, former high school teacher and avatar of a certain stretch of miserable adolescence, knew both plot and teen peril. In his garbage heap of a world, adults, pressed into a strata of pure misery, wait calmly for the crush to descend on their children, who have little but their mordant wit and a fast-dwindling sense of good to hold it at bay.

John Conlan, high school student, is a blue-eyed, good-looking career prevaricator who drinks too much and has a soft spot for any hint of enthusiasm, however hokey. (Planning a prank on yet another substitute teacher, he desists because the old guy is so excited about telling the students about commemorative stamps.) His friend Lorraine is obsessed equally with omens and psychoanalysis, worried about her weight, mildly in love with John, and equally given to ruminating about the destroyed adults around her:

I mean, take the Cricket for instance. I mean Mrs. Reillen. She's across the library watching me as I'm typing this, and she's smiling. You'd think she knew I was defending her. She's really a very nice woman, although it's true her clothes are too tight, and her nylons do make this scraaaaaaatchy sound when she walks. But she isn't trying to be sexy or anything. If you could see her, you'd know that. She just outgrew her clothes. Maybe she doesn't have any money to buy new ones or get the old ones let out. Who knows what kind of problems she has? Maybe she's got a sick mother at home like Miss Stewart, the typing teacher. I know Miss Stewart has a sick mother at home because she let me mark some typing papers illegally and drop them off at her house after school one day. And there was her sick mother—very thin and with this smile frozen on her face—right in the middle of the room! That was this strange part. Miss Stewart kept her mother in this bed right in the middle of the living room, and it almost made me cry....When I look at Miss Reillen I feel sorry. When I hear her walking I feel even more sorry for her because maybe she keeps her mother in a bed in the middle of the living room room just like Miss Stewart. Who would want to marry a woman who keeps her sick mother in a bed in the middle of the living room?

Sorry to type that whole huge thing. But that's the question for John and Lorraine—how are they going to grow into any kind of a life without the miserable specter of their parents—basically, death writ large—smack in the middle of it? When we meet them, there is no aspect of John or Lorraine's life not entirely shadowed. Lorraine's mother is a home nurse ministering to people who are dying, from whom she steals the occasional can of soup, while remaining obsessed with making sure Lorraine doesn't get loose with boys at the same time she informs her she's not very good-looking. John's father, whom he calls "The Bore," and his mother, who is obsessed with deodorizing everything, are fonder of John's older stockbroker brother, Kenneth, than they are of their incendiary younger son. ("Be your own man!" his father says. "But for God's sake get your hair cut — you look like an oddball.")

Which explains why John and Lorraine are so drawn to Mr. Angelo Pignati, a man they befriend after prank-calling him as members of a fake neighborhood charity. As John says, the Pigman — so called because of the enormous collection of novelty pigs he shows them — is the absolute reverse of all the adults they know: Not only filled with native good humor, but innocently trusting and loving of those around him in a world where the default mode towards them is antagonistic. The Pigman isn't trying to be on their level or drag them down, he just delights in their company: "In fact," says John, "the thing Lorraine and I liked best about the Pigman was that he didn't go around saying we were cards or jazzy or cool or hip. He said we were delightful, and if there's on way to show how much you're not trying to make believe you're not behind the times, it's to go around saying people are delightful."

The delightfully oddball friendship that develops is one in which the three engage in the kind of activities John and Lorraine have never experienced: visiting baboons at the zoo, shopping for exotic foods at Beekman's, roller-skating through department stores, playing pen-and-pencil shorthand psychology games meant to reveal one's true nature. It's a childhood compressed into a few months, one that John and Lorraine treasure: "One part of me was saying 'Don't let this nice old man waste his money,' and the other half was saying, 'Enjoy it, enjoy doing something absolutely absurd' — something that could let me be a child in a way I never could be with my mother, something just silly and absurd and...beautiful," thinks Lorraine. John has an even more violent feeling of protection:

"John, turn your radio down."
"John, you're disturbing your father."
"John, you're disturbing your mother."
"John, you're disturbing the cat."
"John, please do whatever you'd like. Make yourself comfortable. If you want something out of the refrigerator, help yourself. I want you to feel at home."
And always with a big smile so you knew he meant it.
That was the Pigman, and I knew I'd kill Norton if he tried to hurt the old man."

Yes, there is a bad thing, and it happens with Norton. You know how I am about the bad endings. But Lorraine and John aren't bitter at their parents—"My mom is a very pretty woman when she has her long brown hair down," Lorraine says, "and when she smiles, which is hardly ever. She just doesn't look the way she sounds, and I often wonder how she got this way"—but they do, as Lorraine says, wonder how they got this way—because if they could find out, maybe they could keep it from happening to them. There's an important scene in the middle of the novel where Lorraine observes an attendant at the zoo:

The thing that made me stop going to the zoo a few years ago was the way one attendant fed the sea lions. He climbed up on the big diving board in the middle of the pool and unimaginatively just dropped the fish in the water. I mean, if you're going to feed sea lions, you're not supposed to plop the food in the tank. You can tell by the expressions on their faces that the sea lions are saying things like "Don't dump the fish in!"

"Pick the fish up one by one and throw them into the tank so we can chase after them."

"Throw the fish in different parts of the tank!"

"Let's have fun!"

That's Lorraine and John, looking for any sign of life from the adults around them for whom they depend not only for nourishment, but for love, interest, smarts, play—any sense of joy in the world. It's not until they meet Mr. Pignati that they find it—and it's only after losing him that they realize it's up to them to create it again: "There was no one else to blame anymore—No Bores or Old Ladies or Nortons, or Assassins waiting at the bridge....Our life would be what we made of it—nothing more, nothing less." John and Lorraine want to avoid the crush. But their roller skates are gone, and it's just not certain that they can.

• • • • • •

First of all, MANY THANKS to all of you for your lovely notes and congratulations! MANY, MANY THANKS. I cried six times and had to go buy some really expensive luggage to collect myself. I am really looking forward to us having wonderful book worms together. (Also, Tumi is having a 40% off sale. I added 10% with a Bloomies card and 15% with a July 4th pre-sale for a grand total of 65% off their Tech Pulse line. I'm just saying.) I can assure you that, actually, every single book you all asked for is coming up in this column. For reels; I love those too. And for interested jezzies, I'm starting a mailing list for news and events and any other book-related info on the book I deem informational. If you would like to be on it, simply write me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com with the words SUBSCRIBE TUMI in the subject line, and I will put you on it.

Now, onto last week's Plotfinder, which related to a Suffragette, some forced-feeding, and a rape. After forwarding all the guesses to my querying friend, I received this missive:

I think THAT’S IT! I’ve just ordered it through Brooklyn’s interlibrary loan and will soon be able to hold it in my hands and know for certain is this is the long lost book! How exciting. Thank you! Will keep you posted.

xx a.

I believe it is too! Because I am too impatient to wait for Brooklyn's creaky library system to come through, and because I love the title, I am going to go ahead and give the win to Sue C. for Never Jam Today. Ah, why they did away with the lovely painted illustration covers, I will never know:

NEVER KNOW. Congrats, Sue! You know the drill: email me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com with your column request.

I am also giving a bonus column request to commenter Eeva, who helped me out with A Long Day in November, which seems sadly out of print, like every other good book in the world. It is by Ernest J. Gaines, of course, a writer I have often enjoyed in adulthood! (At some point, maybe we can eke out a column on adult writers who wrote YA before they were trying to make all adult writers write for YA, so any intel on that, bring it on.) Eeva, write me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com and do with me what you will.

Now, onto this week's Plotfinder. I haven't shown a lot of international love in the column, so this one comes from reader Angharad C., writing from France and seeking something Australian:

I have a request for a novel that I'm almost 90% sure is Australian:

A girl from a poor loud screechy family who live in dirt poor part of town meets a girl at school who is very beautiful and put together. So perfect that in her lunch, her mother has put celery sticks in water so that they'll stay crisp while waiting to be eaten. The first girl looks on in envy at this one's perfect life, and decides she hates the beautiful girl. And of course, being a YA, they become friends.

Googling "Australian YA celery sticks" gets me nothing. The novel would have been written in the 70s or early 80s.

I am an idiot, and only learned that celery stick trick a few weeks ago. If only I'd had this novel in my youth! Good luck, everybody! As you know, answers go in comments or to jezziefinelines@gmail.com. First correct answer wins!

For your note-taking pleasure, coming up in the next few weeks:

Happy Endings Are All Alike

then

Stranger With My Face

then

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, for which my dear friend and amazing author Laura Lippman, who knows far more about the dark side of teen girls than I ever will, has agreed to guest!!! Which reminds me: time to get another novel in which a teen murders someone up in here.

The Pigman [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier: Julie Of The Wolves: The Call Of The Wild
• Deenie: Brace Yourself
•A Wrinkle In Time: Quit Tesseracting Up
•Love Is One Of The Choices: No, Not That 'Sex And The City'
•The Girl With The Silver Eyes: Little Pitchers Have Big Pharma
•Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself: Springtime For Hitler, Part II
•Summer Of My German Soldier: Springtime For Hitler, Part I
•From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: City Of Angels
•A Gift Of Magic: Totally Psyched
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
•The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What A Missel Thrush Is
•To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie: No Telephone To Child Services
•The Westing Game: Partners In Crime
• The Moon By Night: Travels With Vicky
•My Sweet Audrina: The Book Of Sister And Forgetting
•The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty
•The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits
•The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!
•Are You In The House Alone? One Out Of Four, Maybe More
•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week
• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die

[On a frivolous note, it should be said that these books do have great clothes: lots of polyester pants suits, neck-tie blouses, the occasional shawl and dresses that hint at "soft feminine curves." If approached by New York Magazine's "Look Book" or even the Time Out's "Public Eye," — hasn't happened — I always planned to characterize my look as "Harlequin heroine circa 1981, pre-makeover" (since I still have the undesirable specs, curly hair of a woman denying her femininity.)]

I recently came across the most appalling specimen of this genre I've ever encountered: 1980's Promise at Midnight by one Lilian Peake, which might be called the ur-HarRo. Shona Carroll is a sad-sack pianist engaged to a flautist named Calvin, who's always insulting her. 'Average, Calvin had called her, not good enough to carry her far in the world of music. Certainly not to the heights to which he aspired. And she agreed with him uncomplainingly.' She joins him on a cruise as his accompanist, ('she knew it was praise because he didn't curse her') where she is promptly thrown against The Hero, Marsh Faraday, by the ship's tossing.

Marsh Faraday, naturally, has a granite-like profile with 'etched lines betraying a worldly cynicism' and seems to have no expressions other than "mocking smiles", "taunting looks," "faintly derisive" eyes, "cynical amusement," and, just to shake it up, the occasional "unsmiling gaze." Due to turbulence on the high seas, Shona gets thrown against his steely thighs every couple of pages. "If he thinks, she told herself, he can reduce me to simpering adulation of his male physique and magnetic good looks by assessing me as if I were being auditioned for his harem then he's mistaken."

Long story short: fiance takes up with a blonde and declares they need to keep their engagement secret; Shona agrees; Marsh Faraday suggests they have a pretend affair for unclear reasons; sexy abuse ensues.

His mouth hit hers with a force which ground her lips against her teeth." She breaks away but, "as her muscles had tensed, so his hold had tightened. Now, in his anger at her body's repulsion of him, his arms became like cruel bonds. 'After that supreme bit of 'I'm your for the taking' act, you have the cheek to imply, with all the female 'no-go' signs you can muster, that you want me to get the hell out of here?' In his anger his nails were making piercing dents in her flesh." She says she's engaged. "'The devil you are!' He threw her from him and she staggered. 'Not judging by the way you pressed yourself against me when I caught you, the way you kissed me back when I kissed you. You felt like a woman who's been wandering in the desert for months, devoid of all male contact - and do I mean contact!

"That's not true,' she flung back, knowing he was right but knowing, too, that nothing would make her admit it. 'It-it was a reflex action, pure and simple. I-I hated it, really. I hate the - the very taste of your lips.' With the back of her hand, she wiped her mouth. The ship pitched again and again she was thrown off balance. This time he let her fall. She went backwards against the bed, hitting her head against the telephone and radio as she went down."

Wait, you're not entertained? Aroused? Huh. And we haven't even gotten to the part where he throttles her. Or spanks her in public. And by the way, I'm also leaving out, like, twenty pages of insults from both men, indulgent 'my-son-is-such-a-scamp' talk from his mother, a speech about how "when the prey is juicy and desirable and casts scent trails behind it, then it can't complain if the predator springs and captures it and proceeds to tear it apart" and a couple more fake engagements.

And then, of course, he explains how it was all for her own good because he loves her.

"I know what you deserve,' he said, and his hand reached out to close her lips which were opened on a gasp of protest. 'Marriage to me, and that's what you're going to get.'
'Are you proposing?' she asked, her body trembling now for a different reason.
'Not proposing - informing, demanding, stating. And you're agreeing. Right?'
Her brown eyes melted as they gazed into his. 'You're dictatorial and you're overbearing and you're a tyrant, Marsh Faraday, but -' she curled into him, 'I love you so much and I've loved you from the moment-'" He mashes her mouth.

For all our sakes, let's hope our mothers weren't reading these while we were in utero, as they remain one of the most disturbingly perverse phenomena I've ever encountered, a slap in the face to any women's rights gains that were concurrently taking place. (I'm guessing that my own mother, a member of the short-lived "Women's Bank of New York" at the time, was probably not receptive.) Oh, and if you see any, send 'em my way - lest we forget and all that. And, um, I need the fashion inspiration.

Promise At Midnight [Amazon]

Lucky for me, I'll be helping out with the book in some as yet-to-be determined capacity, including but not limited to repeated demands that Lizzie include mention of my personal favorite and as-yet-to-be Fine Lined book, Harriet the Spy. As always, those with ideas, or simply congratulations to share, can reach Lizzie at jezziefinelines@gmail.com. And for those who want to see our entire collection of Fine Lines columns, click here.

Earlier: All Fine Lines Posts
Harriet The Spy: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon

Related: Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

"Who's the girl with the daisy freshness? You, we hope. In the business world you're not only under obligation to do a good, conscientious piece of work, but part of the bargain is that you look decorative wile you're doing it. Companies often spend large sums of money to make their reception rooms and offices into glamorous settings, and they expect their employees to further the effect by always appearing perfectly and tastefully groomed. Of what worth are the potted philodendrons, the lavish drapes, and the modern furnishings if the customer is confronted with the sleepyhead who staggers in, featuring curlers and a kerchief, or the gumchewer in the grimy blouse with a button missing?" (pg. 137)

"The clever job applicant most certainly wears a hat—one that is fairly small and not too extreme in style. Although a hat is becoming less essential these days, particularly in warm weather, many personnel directors look to see if a prospective employee has the good business sense to wear one. The girl with a hat is sure to be rated a good notch above a hatless competitor, because she has made the extra effort to finish off her costume." (pg. 284)

"Allow the employer to lead the interview conversation as much as possible. Girls who talk too much, are too self-assertive, or who force their personality into the interview too strongly usually are ushered out rather fast." (pg. 289)

"Not only the big brass and the board of directors are concerned about employees making a good impression, but your own particular boss is also mighty interested. Your good grooming is evidence that he knows how to pick a smart girl—that he's a pretty clever fellow. He may be only third assistant to the purchasing agent, but if he can choose an attractive and charming Girl Friday who's efficient as well, his prestige has leaped several notches. Needless to say, when he can take pride in you the benefits are sure to bounce back your way." (pg. 137)

More advice:

"During your menstrual period it is more important than ever to guard your daintiness." (pg. 139)

"The surest way to a man's heart (good roast beef not withstanding) is through his ego. If you can inspire him or give him a higher vision of himself, you have presented him with the most marvelous gift any man could desire. The woman who can do this is always cherished and adored." (pg. 448)

"The most gratifying part of a quest for charm and beauty is that the more you work at it, the greater are the miracles that will be worked for you!" (pg. 468)

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads Jean Craighead George's 'Julie Of The Wolves,' which won a Newberry Medal in 1973.

I made an embarrassing discovery upon settling in for this week's reread: I had never, in fact, read Julie of the Wolves. (I'm not a complete fantasist—I do own a battered copy on which I or, far more likely, somebody else, drew large, looping lines with a pen.) I'm not totally surprised I thought I had, though. There's the whole "Noun of the Noun" issue (Summer of the Swans, Anne of Green Gables, Summer of My German Soldier) — but also just the preponderance of child-alone-with-animal(s) cover treatments (Sounder, A Day No Pigs Would Die, Zia, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Phantom Tollbooth, even Clan of the Cave Bear, which counts since I READ it as a child). Obviously, if I girl is striding around the landscape wearing Mukluks surrounded by creatures with fur that drool, I must have been in on it.

Miyax, "American" name Julie, is a young Eskimo girl who, after the death of her mother, was raised by her father, Kapugen, out in the wild, catching seals etc., until her father is drafted and aunt hauls her back to town to go to one of the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. As the author tells us, even Miyax's body is part of the landscape, as she's a "classic Eskimo beauty, small of bone and delicately wired with strong muscles....Unlike the long-limbed, long-bodied animals of the south that are cooled by dispensing heat on extended surfaces, all things in the Arctic tend toward compactness, to conserve heat."

As the book opens, 13-year-old Miyax has run away (seven sleeps, so far) from her husband Daniel, to whom she was affianced at the behest of her aunt. Her only hope for survival out on the tundra is a pack of wolves whom she may partake of kills with, if she can earn the leader, Amaroq's, trust.

Here she was, watching wolves—she, Miyax, daughter of Kapugen, adopted child of Martha, citizen of the United States, pupil at the Bureau of Indian Affairs School in Barrow, Alaska, and thirteen-year-old wife of the boy Daniel, watching wolves. She shivered at the thought of Daniel, for it was he who had driven her to this fate.

The fate in question has, for the first third of the book, quite a lot to do with becoming part of the pack, what various members of the pack do, and accumulating meat—for reasons I will get to in a second. And I will ascribe either to the fact that adults can't absorb tundra-porn like children or just that I am a bad person that I skipped mightily over these sections, just like I did the stuff about the healing properties of various flora in The Clan of the Cave Bear. I apologize, plotfinder winner! Here's an example just for the meat-lovers amongst us:

When in sight of her house she took a shortcut and came upon a pile of caribou droppings—fuel for her fire! Gleefully, she stuffed her pockets, tied a marker at the site for later use, and skipped home dreaming of owlet stew.

She plucked the birds, laid them on the ground, and skillfully cut them open with her ulo. Lifting out the warm viscera, she tipped back her head and popped them into her mouth. They were delicious—the nuts and candy of the Arctic. She had forgotten how good they tasted. They were rich in vitamins and minerals and her starving body welcomed them.

Treats over, she sliced her birds into delicate strips and simmered them slowly and not too long.

"Chicken of the North," Miyax gave a toast to the birds. Then she drank the rich juices and popped the tender meat in her mouth.

AND:

It was time to carve and eat! She cut open the belly and lifted out the warm liver, the "candy" of her people. With a deft twist of the ulo, she cut off a slice and savored each bite of this, the most nourishing part of the animal. So rich is the liver that most of it is presented to the women and girls, an ancient custom with wisdom at its core—since women give birth to babies, they need the iron and blood of the liver.

Candy, candy! (News for you ladies under 30—the closer you get to menopause, the more you DO want to take hunks of bloody liver and drop them, dripping, in your mouth.) But the novel picks up as we realize where Julie/Miyax is actually headed — to San Francisco, to meet with her pen pal, the white girl Amy Pollack, whose father works for the Bureau helping the Alaskans with the alcoholism that has followed the white people:

The many years in the seal camp alone with Kapugen had been dear and wonderful, but she realized now that she had lived a strange life. The girls her age could speak and write English and they knew the names of Presidents, astronauts, and radio and movie personalities, who lived below the top of the world. ... the wonders of Mekoryuk dimmed as weekly letters from Amy arrived. Julie learned about television, sports cars, blue jeans, bikinis, hero sandwiches, and wall-to-wall carpeting in the high school Amy would soon be attending. Mekoryuk had no high school. The Eskimo children of the more prosperous families were sent to the mainland for further schooling, something with Aunt Martha could not afford.

But after Miyax marries Daniel, he tries to rape her — and that's how she winds up with the wolves, back on the tundra, to the world of her early childhood with Kapugen, collecting caribou meat to have enough nourishment to make the long journey to her friend. But her journey is interrupted when Amaroq is killed by hunters who descend in a plane and shoot the entire pack. Riddled with grief, Miyax finds out that Kapugen, whom she had believed dead, is in fact alive, and has brought a struggling town back to self-sufficiency by teaching them to hunt, as he taught Miyax. She journeys first to the nearby town, knowing if she can just return to him, she won't need to go to Amy:

The big room was warm and smelled of skins and fat. Harpoons hung on the wall, and under the window was a large couch of furs. The kayak hung from the ceiling, and a little stove glowed in the center of the room. Kapugen's house in Kangik looked just like Kapugen's house in seal camp. She was home!

Not so fast. Kapugen's wife comes into the room, and Miyax realizes she's missed half of what she needs to see:

Miyax saw that her face was pale and her hair was reddish gold. A chill spread over her. What had Kapugen done? What had happened to him that he would marry a gussak? What was his new life?

Kapugen and his woman talked—she loudly, he quietly. Miyax's eyes when around the room again. This time she saw not just the furs and the kayak, but electric lamps, a radio-phonograph, cotton curtains and, through the door to the annex, the edge of an electric stove, a coffee pot, and china dishes.

Then she saw a helmet and goggles on a chair. Miyax stared at them until Kapugen noticed her.

"Aw, that," he said. "I now own an airplane, Miyax. It's the only way to hunt today."

...Miyax heard no more. It could not be, it could not be. She would not let it be...she opened the door and closed it behind her. Kapugen, after all, was dead to her.

I was recently discussing with a few friends why, in the books of earlier eras, all the children are orphans or somehow bereft of parental influence. There is the obvious explanation that this allows the child to interact with the world a bit more fully, but I think there's another reason. The child is not only interacting with the world, but serving as a symbolic bridge between cultures. Just as The Secret Garden's Mary is able to restore a corrupt household riddled with the spoils of colonialism to a stunning example of a lush England which nurtures itself from within, so Miyax is the bridge from the Eskimo ways to the new Alaska, a hybrid of native and white culture in which Kapugen still kayaks, but has a white wife and a plastic, not sealskin, coat.

Sadly for Miyax, her dream to "live with the rhythm of the beasts and the land" is no longer supportable. Not only are the "seals scarce and the whales almost gone," Kapugen himself has gone from an Alaskan hunter to a western one, using a plane to shoot animals that he doesn't even bother to collect. Perhaps he has killed Amaroq, the last hunter of the tundra, the one who has sustained his daughter in her time of need. As she tells us, that kill has turned Miyax's dream of flying to San Francisco into a "dream of fire and blood and death." The only thing left for her, and for Alaskan culture, is a bastardized version of their old way of life. Even her name is gone. As George writes, it's not Miyax who points her boots back towards Kapugen. It's Julie.

—-—-—-—-—-—-—--

Holy hell, you ladies NEVER cease to amaze me. So, the answer to last week's sister/greasepaint/pretty mystery was INDEED similar to "The....I want to say The Giver but it's not" in that it was The Leaving, by Budge Wilson. Winner is Lauren L., avowed lurker, by email. Lauren, you are clearly hiding your light under a bushel with this whole "lurking" action. You are, as Trump says, a winner. Or maybe that was Alec Baldwin in Glengary Glen Ross. Whatever, you have the right to tell me to do a column and no one can ever take that away from you. Write me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com to claim your booty, or even put it in the damn COMMENTS! It will be good for your constitution.

This week's Plotfinder actually comes from a friend who is feeling poorly, and since her own stomach is rebelling I'd like to solve this particular related narrative. I'm recreating the oral request from memory here:

"Okay, so there's this girl in the 20s, and she's all out on the town, working, new job, having fun. Has a great boyfriend. He's gotta go off to the war. [So a little before the 20s. —Lizzie] She's loving her job, and somehow gets hooked up with the suffragette movement, Saratoga, the whole nine. She's marching. She's into it. THEN SHE LITERALLY GETS TAKEN TO JAIL, AND FORCE-FED. FORCE FED!!!!!!!! Then her boyfriend comes back. He's still great. And he's all about, when is the marriage happening, and she's actually like, you are terrific. But I choose me."

Ladies? Send your guesses and secure knowledge to jezziefinelines@gmail.com, or leave the answer in the comments. First correct wins the chance to order me around.

I've got one more bonus Plotfinder, again from yours truly. This is an odd duck, since I'm fairly sure I'm remembering the title, A Long Day in Winter, correctly. It's about a young black boy over the course of one day when his parents, who are sharecroppers on a sugarcane plantatio