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]

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 'Stranger With My Face', Lois Duncan's 1981 novel in which Laurie Stratton gets every girl's wish: to be adopted, and to have a secret twin sister.

My name is Laurie Stratton. I am seventeen years old, and I live at the Cliff House on the northern tip of Brighton Island.

Would it have been so hard to let me astrally project, God? I know the telepathy was not a possibility, as by second grade, my peers and I were already running numerous controlled studies using the means of scrap paper and different corners of the room, and to succeed would have granted me far too much power amongst them. I know you gave me precognition that one time about winning that contest in 8th grade and it was so spooky I could never have handled any more spook. I am way too OCD to move things with my mind, and I know, as I am not the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, I cannot be a witch. HOWEVER.

I don't see what the PROBLEM would have been with allowing me to freaking LEAVE MY BODY FROM TIME TO TIME AND TRAVEL THE WORLD, BOUND ONLY BY AN INVISIBLE CORD LINKED TO MY TRUE SPIRIT WHILE MY BODY WAS TEMPORARILY A HUSK, A SHELL, TO ALL APPEARANCES DEAD!

In any case, Laurie Stratton, unbeknownst-to-self-child-of-the-Navajo-with-twin-sister, is far more blessed than I. (Nava-ho!) In Stranger With My Face, Duncan has ditched her typical Southwest setting for the rocky shoals of coastal New England, where our heroine lives with her mother and father, a painter and writer, respectively, and two sweet younger siblings, Neal and Megan. Also in the mix is Laurie's so-psyched-to-no-longer-be-gawky prize of a ripped boyfriend, Gordon; a brooding, darkly handsome acquaintance, Jeff, whose face was half-burned off by an exploded can of lighter fluid; and, of course, an expert outsider WITH insider extrasensory knowledge, Laurie's schoolmate Helen Tuttle, who has recently moved from the Southwest and becomes Laurie's new friend.

Interestingly, the first few scenes of the novel, as befits the events to come, are rife with splits in which one element is not only the opposite of the other, but the veritable photo negative. First is Laurie's passage from gawky to glamorous—a constant Duncan trope at the beginnings of her novel's. Laurie's improved looks not only alter her appearance but her entire social currency:

In every girl's life, I guess, there must be one special summer that is a turning point, a time of stretching and reaching and blossoming out and leaving childhood behind. This was the summer that had happened to me. The year before, I had been awkward and gawky, all pointed knees and sharp elbows and bony rib cage, hiding my shyness behind a book while girls like Natalie Coleson and Darlene Briggs wriggled around in their bikinis and got boys to buy them Cokes and rub them with baby oil.

This summer it had all been different. The first day I walked out onto the beach, clutching my book and my beach towel, I heard a wolf whistle.

Another split is found in Jeff Rankin, a former crush of Laurie's who is now moody and withheld, though il a raison:

He was fourteen that first year, with the sort of dark, flashy good looks that by rights should have belonged to someone much older. The second summer he came, he had a motor bike, and there was always some squealing girl sitting on it behind him, with her arms wrapped around his waist and her chin on his shoulder. Sometimes her hair was dark and blond and sometimes red, but it was always long and shiny, flying out behind them like the tail of a comet as they went roaring down the road.

I turned fourteen myself that year—a skinny, flat-chested fourteen—and I dreamed at night about what it would be like to be one of those girls.

....it was a good thing Jeff did have that summer, because halfway through the next one a can of lighter fluid exploded and burned off half his face...

The left side of his face was fine. If you saw him at a certain angle, you'd have thought he was the best-looking guy you'd ever seen. If you saw him from the right, you had to stop and swallow hard.

It occurs to me that even the fact that Laurie is recounting, not experiencing, the events in question, leads to a sort of narrative split, the dreadful present aftermath merging with a golden past. (Does not "There was a time when I, too, loved Cliff House," have more than a whiff of "Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again"?)

However, the biggest initial split is with Laurie and her own family—from whom she is inherently estranged, just as Jeff is to his old face, by looks:

I didn't have the sort of looks you found just everywhere. Gordon kidded sometimes that I could be part Indian with my dark coloring, high cheekbones and almond eyes. "Bedroom eyes," he called them, meaning they were sexy. My father referred to them as "alien" because they were the same shape as the eyes he gave to the maidens from other worlds in his novels. When I looked at my parents—both of them so fair—and at Neal and Meg with their light blue eyes and freckled noses, I wondered sometimes how I had managed to be born into such a family.

Well, duh, you weren't! However, we don't learn this from Dad and Mom. (Who, p.s., are a "night person" and a "day person" whose schedules only briefly coincide, just to pile this kind of thing on.) Instead, we learn this from a sepulchral presence around town who people keep mistaking for Laurie. As the days pass, "Laurie" appears at a party the actual Laurie has begged off of, enraging Gordon; in the house, confusing Laurie's parents; at the Post Office, where she accepts a birthday invite that she fails to pass on, enraging the birthday girl; and in various lonely poses around the dunes surrounding Cliff House.

Laurie is beside herself at how this could be happening, but, luckily, Helen Tuttle, child of the Southwest, holder of knowledge of the Navajo, and former girlfriend of Luis, a Navajo, is there to point out an explanation other than Laurie's going crazy:

...."I was home in bed the whole time,"

"You weren't using astral projection, were you?" Helen asked.

"Using what?" I said in bewilderment.

"You know—sending your mind out from your body? Luis's father used to be able to do it."

Aw, sheet. Is someone gonna take a book or two out from the library? You know they is! Okay, but getting ahead of myself. Laurie finally gets the answer to her question, when she is visited, in a profound dream, by Lia, who claims to be her twin sister and leans across and gives her a spooky astral-projection kiss. At this point, in possession of a towering mountain of supernatural proof, Laurie confronts her parents, whose reaction is, to put it mildly, not-open. "The trend today is toward total openness about adoption," her father says. "Still, that idea has been upsetting to your mother....Laurie, it's not that big a deal. You're the same person you always were. You're our beloved daughter....Now that you know your background, there's nothing left for you to wonder about. Can't we just file this away and get on with our normal lives?"

Um, let's just file THAT away for a second, and I will come back to it. (Incidentally, as someone who's approximately 9,873 years old, I have to admit I remember very well when this kind of secrecy was the norm, oh young Juno fans.) What's more key for the plot at this point is her mother's explanation of why her parents, confronted with a set of beautiful, mixed-blood Navajo twins to adopt, did not just snag both:

"Then, why—" The question rose to my lips without my even realizing that I was going to ask it. "Why did you take me instead of her?"

"We couldn't raise both of you," Dad said. "We were going out on a limb to take even one dependent at that point in our lives."

"That's not what I asked," I said. "What I want to know is, why did you choose me over my sister?"

There was a moment's silence as my parents exchanged glances.

Then Dad said slowly, "Your mother—your mother, well, she thought—"

"I didn't want her," Mother said. Her normally gentle voice was strangely sharp. "I just didn't want her. I wanted you."

"But if we were just a like—"

"You weren't alike," Mother said. "You looked just alike—both of you so beautiful with big, solemn eyes and all that thick, dark hair. The people at the agency wanted us to take you both, and despite what Dad says, I really think we might have done it. It seemed wrong to separate twin sisters. I picked you up and cuddled you, and I knew I never wanted to let you go. It was as though you were meant to be ours. Then I handed you to Dad to hold and picked up the other baby, and—and—"

"And what?" I prodded.

"I wanted to put her down."

BECAUSE LIA IS EVIL, OBVIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!! And, of course, the machinations of Lia's evil, as they unfold in the novel, are great fun. Not only does she put Helen Tuttle in the hospital (the ability of specters to put people in hospitals in the novels of Lois Duncan must only be exceeded by the ability of the shark in the Jaws franchise to increasingly have the ability to handily kill people on dry land), she lures Jeff and Laurie to a near-death experience, and, having alienated Laurie completely from her peers and those who love her, manages to invade her body and steal her entire life.

BUT NOT SO FAST, LIA!

Because rather than entirely cut the cord of Laurie Stratton from all the elements of her life, ironically, Lia's invasion, in the end, strengthens them. Lia's ruining of friendships brought on Laurie's new social status only makes Laurie realize how tenuous those bonds were in the first place, and how glad she can be in Helen's truer loyalty. Her interruption of the placid family structure of the Strattons forces Laurie's parents to realize how damaging their inability to face Laurie's adoption was, which in turn allows Laurie to realize she is, in the end, a Stratton who loves and is loved her family. And, most important, when Lia splits Laurie and Gordon apart, she actually brings Jeff and Laurie together—not coincidentally because Jeff, unlike Gordon, is willing to face the question of Lia and Laurie's adoption, and he's also willing to talk about the weirder question of what Megan calls Laurie's "ghosty":

"Look, Jeff, there's no sense in our discussing this. You don't believe in astral projection, and I don't blame you. I couldn't accept it myself until just recently." A question occurred to me. "What were you doing here the night you thought you saw me? There's no reason for anyone to come out this way unless he's coming to Cliff House."

"I walk here sometimes because you live here," Jeff said.

Um, line of dialog in Sixteen Candles where Jake tells Molly Ringwald that he's come to the church because "I heard you were here," you have a freaking RIVAL FOR BEST LINE EVER!

But, even though the ostensible point of the novel is that looks don't matter because those who love us, like Laurie's savior and little sister Megan, can look past them to the true self beneath, of course, looks do matter. Not only are they a constant subject within Laurie's family before Laurie knows about Lia, as the novel commences, Laurie and Jeff's changing looks have reversed the course of their entire lives. Duncan's point about our appearance versus our true self is much more subtle. In the scene where Laurie, loosed from her own body, regards the sleeping Lia, we can see that clearly:

She was a duplicate of myself....yet there were differences.

This girl's ears were pierced, and mine were not. Mother and I had gone through a few rounds on that issue, and she had won. "There are enough natural holes in a person's anatomy," she had said firmly.

....There was a tiny scar on the chin that might have been nothing more than the result of scratching an insect bite, but it was a scar that I did not have.

There was a mole on the neck at a spot where I had no mole.

I continued my inspection...She had perfect fingernails, the kind that had always filled me with envy. My own had a scraggly look, not exactly "bitten to the quick," but "slightly gnawed."

Small things. Unimportant. Almost unnoticeable, yet they spelled the difference between Lia Abbott and Laurie Stratton.

So it is not that looks don't matter. Not only do they matter to others—they matter because they reflect choices we have made, what has been done by us and to us. Our looks may start with what life had dealt us, but they are also about the lives we lead. So it's not that you can't read a book by its cover. It's that if you do (look up), it's not the title or illustration you should look at — it's the nicks, creases, and dog-ears that tell the tale.

• • • • •

Hello, my pretties! Okay, for this week's extraordinarily depressing Plotfinder there were few called and fewer still to serve. The winner, beating my best friend's, "Ooooo, I know I read that but I can't remember the title," which I think I will start to refer to as a Not-finder, was the commenter The Former June Bronson, who clocked in with Randy at 12:59 pm. Ms. Bronson, I can find no supporting information for this book whatsoever and am not even sure if this is the right Randy. (YOU try plugging "Randy" into Google.) However, we operate on the honor system at Jezebel, and I'm sure I will imminently receive delighted confirmation from my Not-finder in any case.

Now, onto this week's Plotfinder, which comes from reader Hannah K., and kind of makes me hungry:

It's about this girl (I think her name is Kate) who is really tall, and her older brother's friend comes to visit for the winter holidays with his hot girlfriend, but is reminded of his childhood crush on the protagonist and stuff starts to develop between them...and there is this part right at the beginning in the supermarket where she's buying cinnamon sticks and she sees their elderly neighbor, who later dies (I think), and there is this episode about mice in somebody's car engine getting killed (maybe the neighbor?), and ultimately she starts dating the guy but her (former?) best friend steals him from her at a Christmas party at somebody's aunt's tacky mansion, and she sees them kissing and, like, dumps him forever, and ultimately the boy camps outside the house (I hope this is all from the same book) to win back her love and everything is OK in the end. Also, I think she wears glasses?

As always, send your guesses to jezziefinelines@gmail.com or stick 'em in the comments. First one with correct guess gets to choose a column, and I'll do it.

I'd also like to give a shoutout to readers Ilona and Hillary, who provided me with scans of the cover you see above—each, incidentally, marked distinctly by its owner. For their labors, they will each receive a vintage copy of Judy Blume's Tiger Eyes from my personal collection.

Next week, the lovely and talented Mizz Laura M. Lippman guests with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase so I can buy some goddamn cinnamon sticks in peace. After that, we'll resume our regular schedule our pre-informing for your future reading purposes, but for now, like Laurie, languish briefly in the mystery.

Did you hear? A book approaches! Glory to! Would you like to know all about it? You would? Send me an email at jezziefinelines@gmail.com with the words, YES, I HAVE TO DO THIS EVERY WEEK in the subject line and I'll put you on it.

As ever, send your Plotfinder requests, objections and obfuscations to jezziefinelines@gmail.com. Rest assured, I take each email in my inbox, prepare to leap, and scream "Erase the words!" before I break free of this mortal coil.

Stranger With My Face [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier: Happy Endings Are All Alike: The Price Of Fault
•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

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

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

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]

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 plantation, separate. Early in the morning, his mother gets up with him to pee, then he asks for water, and she says, "Let it out and put it all in again, huh?" She gives him a bit of sugarcane when she's working in the fields, and his hands are cold. The mother and father rejoin again at the end, and the father's hands are strong and calloused from working in the fields. It probably took place in the 30s or 40s, and the cover is purplish with the boy and mother on it. ETC. Doesn't exist, as far as Google and Amazon are concerned. POSSIBLY by someone with first name of Brenda?

Have at it, in comments or to jezziefinelines@gmail.com.

You guys keep asking me to list next week's books! Hello! I DO THAT now. I know I am yelling at the wrong people if you have made it down here, but HELLO.

Next week is:

The Pigman

followed by:

Happy Endings Are All Alike

followed by...

Stranger With My Face!

If anyone has the "right" cover for Stranger With My Face, I'd appreciate a scan. it's quite rare—Lia is tall and semi-Native American looking, long dark hair, and actually looking at herself (but not herself!!!) in the mirror. My copy lost the cover a long time ago, which is of course psychologically devastating and something I think about probably once a day. Provider wins a mystery vintage text from my enormous, teetering collection.

Send pics, demands, guesses, and anything else you think I'd like to know to jezziefinelines@gmail.com. I will take your emails and pull them from my inbox's abdominal cavity, saving the warm, rich liver for myself, because women get to keep the nutrient-rich liver because we have the babies; obviously no one cares if WE get effing nutrients.

Julie of the Wolves [Amazon]

Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier: 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

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 rereads 'Deenie', the 1973 story of a girl whose newly set back proves only a minor setback.

My mother named me Deenie because right before I was born she saw a movie about a beautiful girl named Wilmadeene, who everybody called Deenie for short. Ma says the first time she held me she knew right away I would turn out the same way—beautiful, that is.

Oh, how I wanted to look like the girl on this cover. She might be the only cover girl I ever wanted to look like, actually. (Those legs! That skirt! That SWEATER!) But kudos to the cover artist for catching that Deenie Fenner is that rare kind of beauty, appreciated both by her high-school-age peers and by modeling agencies in NY—and one of the few female characters to whom the reader might relate to exactly as the other characters do: with admiration, jealousy, and an involuntary sense of possession.

When we first meet Deenie, she's an ordinary high school girl, complete with a less pretty older sister, Helen, two best friends, Janet and Midge, a crush, Buddy Brader, and even an actual stalker, Susan Minton, who is given to wearing whatever Deenie wore last week. Her place in the social circle is secure if not exactly all-reigning, and while she by no means torments her inferiors, like the hunchbacked woman at the newstand, Gena Courtney, her wheelchair-bound neighbor, or Barbara Curtis, a new girl whose eczema Deenie privately calls "Creeping Crud," she's not exactly rushing out to sit with them at lunch either.

At home, her father—albeit affectionately—reacts to the events in Deenie's life with baffled, genial detachment: "I didn't make the cheerleading squad," "So you'll find another activity." But her mother has even greater plans for her—to push Deenie into a modeling career: "Deenie, God gave you a beautiful face. Now he wouldn't have done that if he hadn't intended for you to put it to good use." On her own beauty, Deenie's fairly neutral, treating it with admirable equanimity, and only a few qualms. When she's trying out for the cheerleading squad, "Most times I don't even think about the way I look but on special occasions, like today, being good looking really comes in handy. Not that a person has any choice about it. I'm just lucky." But when she thinks a little deeper on her mother's set roles for her and her sister Helen ("Deenie's the beauty, and Helen's the brain!" her mother crows to anyone who'll listen) a few fault lines emerge: "One thing I'm sure of is I don't want to spend my life cleaning house like Ma. Sometimes I think Helen's lucky. She'll be a doctor or a lawyer or engineer and she'll never have to do those things. But if I don't make it as a model, then what?"

Still, it's important to remember that Deenie's no Queen Bee, even though she's well-received in all the modeling agencies her mother totes her around to (despite the increasing complaints about her posture...foreboding, foreshadowing!!!). In another narrative Deenie might lord a recent trip to New York to see a modeling scout over her friends, but Deenie's a product of her present, not the future her mother sees for her:

When we go to Woolworth's Janet's the best at trying on junk without buying. You're not supposed to do that but Janet always gets away with it. The one time I tried on some nail polish the saleslady caught me and I had to buy the whole bottle.

"And we say Harvey Grabowsky," Midge said.

"You did?"

"Yes, we followed him all around the store."

"Did he say anything?"

"He never even noticed."

"Oh."

Harvey is the best looking guy in the ninth grade. He's also on the football team and President of his his class. Harvey has never said one word to me. I guess he doesn't talk to seventh-grade girls at all.

As soon as I hung up the phone rang again. It was Janet.

"We followed Harvey Grabowsky in Woolworth's," she said.

"I know. I just talked to Midge."

"Did she tell you what he bought?"

"No...what?"

"Three ballpoint pens and a roll of Scotch tape. And once I stood right next to him and touched his shirt sleeve!"

I just knew I'd miss out on something great by going to New York.

Yup, something great. Would have absolutely killed me to miss this, too, naturally. But the social drink of adolescence is like a delicate, primordial soup into which the introduction of a foreign agent can alter the composition forever, causing unexpected, irreversible roils in the resident organisms. Which is exactly what happens when Deenie—heretofore heading in a predictable evolutionary direction—finds out she has scoliosis. (Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, that is, or, in Deenie's words, "adolescent and something that sounded like idiotic.")

Suddenly, Deenie goes from having her photo snapped and practicing her walk in front of agents to having her X-rays taken and walking around in order for the doctor to better pinpoint her infirmity. It's portfolio to pathology, a narrative parallel I did not fully appreciate pre-Masters Degree. Even Deenie's new doctor doesn't respond to her in the predictable ways she's used to, as he examines her and she checks out the photos on his wall:

"Were you a good football player?"

"I was fair," he said. "Are you interested in football?"

"I'm not sure. I don't know much about it yet. I wanted to be a cheerleader, but I didn't make the squad."

He didn't say anything about that. I thought he would. I thought he'd say "Well, you can try again next year" or something like that. Instead he said, "Bend over and touch your toes with your hands, Deenie."

No more cheerleading, no more modeling—and no more "you'll find another activity." Instead, it's a race to figure out what activities the new, highly unimproved Deenie actually can do, and who's to blame for the situation:

In the car, on the way home, Ma told Daddy, "Your cousin Belle had something wrong with her back....remember?"

"That was different," Daddy said. "She had a slipped disc."

"But I'll bet that's where this came from."

"I don't think so," Daddy said.

"Because you don't want to think so!" Ma told him.

I wanted them to stop acting like babies and start helping me. I expected Daddy to explain everything on the way home—all that stuff Dr. Griffith had been talking about—that I didn't understand. Instead, he and Ma argued about whose fault it was that I have something wrong with my spine until we pulled into the driveway. It was almost as if they'd forgotten I was there.

And in a way, Deenie is not there anymore. (Also: Ah, marriage.) As the doctor marks her plaster cast with a felt pen to show the braceman where he should put the straps, he might as well be marking the spot in the narrative where Deenie must also fit herself into a new role—finding out what's beneath the pretty face that was masking whatever was underneath. (Gimme one post-Masters moment of meta: when Deenie is cut out of the cast, she even finds that her body stocking has disappeared, leaving her nearly naked, a babe born into a new life who runs immediately for the closet, because it is also freaking mortifying to be naked in front of two doctors. Anyway, thanks! I'll try to keep these to a minimum.)

It's also no coincidence that the first thing Deenie does when she gets home is masturbate, an operation I am not ashamed to admit went right over my head at age 8: "I have this special place and when I rub it I get a very nice feeling. I don't know what it's called or if anyone else has it but when I have trouble falling asleep, touching my special place helps a lot." Deenie does have a private life, and private desires—and soon more socially acceptable ones will also be made manifest. (Deenie, by the way, other people have it! I have it! And I now understand you were NOT talking about your toe!)

The first step is breaking free of her mother:

The brace looks like the one Dr. Kliner showed us three weeks later. It's the ugliest thing I ever saw.

I'm going to take it off as soon as I get home. I swear, I won't wear it. And nobody can make me. Not ever!...I had to fight to keep from crying.

Just when I thought I was going to be okay Ma started. "Oh, my God!" she cried. "What did we ever do to deserve this?" She buried her face in a tissue and made sobbing noises that really got me sore. The louder she cried the madder I got until I shouted, "Just stop it, Ma! Will you just stop it please!"

Dr. Kliner said, "You know, Mrs. Fenner, you're making this very hard on your daughter."

Ma opened the door and ran out of Dr. Kliner's office.

Daddy hugged me and said, "I'm proud of you, Deenie. You're stronger than your mother."

And it's not only that she's stronger—her outward manifestation of difference makes Deenie realize she really is different, not only from what everyone thought of her, but what she thought of herself. "It was hard to believe I really had something in common with Old Lady Murray," Deenie thinks, looking at an illustration of kyphosis, hunchback-ism, with the nurse showing her what her own spine looks like. She's handed a form for the handicapped bus, throws it away, then wonders if her neighbor thinks of herself as a "handicapped person or just a regular girl, like me." She stops worrying about Barbara's creeping crud and being her gym partner after Barbara nicely ties her shoes in gym, since the brace makes it impossible to lean over anymore to do it herself. (Cry-line alert: "When she told us to choose partners Barbara and me looked at each other and grabbed hands." SOB, SOB.) But, sporting her new brace at school, she has her best insight when faced with the avatar of her old standards, Harvey Grabowsky:

When Harvey saw me he asked, "What happened to you?"

He would be the only one in school who didn't already know. "I have scol..." I stopped in the middle. I didn't feel like explaining anything to anybody. Instead I looked straight at him and said, "I jumped off the Empire State Building!" After I said it I felt better. I usually think up clever things to say when it's too late. From now on, when people ask me what's wrong, I'm going to give them answers like that. It's a lot smarter than telling the truth. No one wants to hear the truth. "I jumped right off the top!" I forced myself to laugh.

"Oh, Deenie!" Janet said. "Tell him the truth."

"I just did."

"Hey, that's a good story," Harvey told me.

It is, and it's a much better story than the story her mother had planned for her. After her mother pushes out Helen's boyfriend, coupled with Deenie's brace, the entire beauty and brains scheme comes crashing down in one epic sob scene:

"Oh Ma...you're impossible! Ma didn't give me a special brain. You made that up. And you almost convinced me, Ma...you almost did.... I used to tell myself it didn't matter if I wasn't pretty like Deenie because I have a special brain and Deenie's is just ordinary....but that didn't help Ma....it didn't help at all....because it's not true!"

Helen turned around and looked at me. Then she did the craziest thing. She ran to me and hugged me and cried into my shoulder. "It's not your fault, Deenie...don't let them make you believe that...it's really not your fault."

I started crying too. Helen doesn't hate me, I thought. She should, but she doesn't. We both cried so hard our noses ran but neither one of us let go of the other to get a tissue. And right through it all, Ma kept talking. "I wanted better for you," she said. "Better than what I had myself. That's what I've always planned for my girls...is that so wrong?"

SOB. Um, excuse me. SOB!!!!!!!! But how wonderful that this is not a simple comeuppance story, since it would have been so easy for Blume to make this a tale of the conceited beauty who gets brought low by her own flaws. (ALSO: BLUME IS A GENIUS.) Deenie's not conceited, she's just passive—a very minor flaw that, as Blume knows, in the long run can have far more dire results than excessive self-regard (which, unfortunately, kinda works in one's favor). Ironically, it's Deenie's brace that frees her from the invisible brace her mother was setting up for her, an adolescence locked into a role that would have derailed her growth as a real person. The plastic, with its collar and straps, chafes, but it's a minor cage—and, unlike the cage her mother had in mind, one Deenie can emerge from with her standing intact.

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—--

Now, for the winners of our double-header Plotfinder! You ladies are awesome. Onion-soup bath was, of course, In the Beauty of the Lilies. I mean, Where the Red Fern Grows. I mean, Homecoming. Where the Lilies Bloom!!!!!! That's it! I knew you'd get to it eventually, although I enjoyed all the associative variations, especially when they were delivered with such decisive, wrongheaded aplomb. ("IT IS WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS!!!!!!!!") Wait until you start making mental leaps likeThe Trumpet of the Swan into The March of the Wooden Soldiers, and we'll talk.

The winner, by LITERALLY ONE MINUTE, was commenter Nellicat. Congrats, N! Email me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com to claim your prize.

For our bonus Plotfinder, which actually came from me, because this is my column and it was driving me CRAZY, the answer is, of course, Dear Lola: Or, How to Build Your Own Family.

I had this cover:

THANK YOU.

Unfortunately, Jezebel is only showing up to 100 comments for old posts, and I am therefore unable to double-check if a commenter got it before Erin H., whose correct answer dinged into my inbox at 5:09 pm. If the comments ever come back and someone had it earlier, you get a win along with Erin. Oy, you guys. That's like 19 of you with the power to choose. CHOOSE WISELY!

This week's Plotfinder comes from Kate M., and is actually from a collection of short stories. (I will go off on the interesting collections of short stories quite a few YA authors published another day, as the last time I did that my friend and I just wound up trying to remember the plot of Roald Dahl's "The Swan" from memory and just wanting to end it all.) In any case:

So there's this collection of short stories that I read in 6th grade, and I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the book, but I can tell you that I think it had a lavender-ish cover with a girl on the front looking wistful and windblown... I think it was entitled "The _____" and my brain keeps wanting to to say "The Giver", but it's so not.

Anyway, there was one short story in there that has stuck with me for 15+ years, and it's about these two sisters. The narrator has brown hair and is sort of roundish and gets straight A's, and is the star of the school play, and her sister (I feel like her name was Carrie or Hannah or something like that) is skinny and waify and "always looks like she's waiting for something". Anyway, the waify sister ends up helping with the dominant sister's school play, and as a reward for being a good helper, the teacher puts makeup ("greasepaint") on her face, and then all of a sudden everyone realizes that the waify sister is gorgeous, and after that moment, everything changes. The smart, dominant, pudgier sister still gets straight A's and is the president of every club, but now the waify sister is constantly surrounded by boys, and no longer looks like she's waiting anymore.

I loved that story, and I would love to reread it, but I can't remember the name of the book! Do you have any idea?

As always, enter in comments or by email to jezziefinelines@gmail.com. First correct answer wins a column choice.

Speaking of early Alzheimer's, ladies, you are not keeping enough of an eye on your arthritic old columnist. (Except for calling me on mixing up limburger and liverwurst, which is unprecedented.) I actually skipped clear over an earlier winner's pick I'd announced, Happy Endings Are All Alike, by Sandra Scoppettone, which has lezebelarism AND sexual assault, though not simultaneously. I apologize. To give interested readers time to procure it, we'll stick with the already scheduled Julie of the Wolves next week—and, lest we be ever awash in sexual assaults, introduce The Pigman in between. If I deviate from this at all, feel free to run crying from the room immediately, sobbing about what you've done to deserve this.

Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier: 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
•