Jo Ann Beard

"Inzanesville" is a steady walk through the mire and joys of insanity called adolescence while trying to navigate the delicate, treacherous landmines of a dysfunctional family. Inzanesville is shortly recognized as a euphemism of Insanesville and we are abruptly drawn into the place and time of what we understand is going to be a gripping story.

Jo Ann Beard is an earthy writer. She is a writer who doesn't who doesn't use flowery language. She's an author of grass roots. When she writes, she show more not only tells us, she shows us with clear words and descriptions of moments and places we can remember and see from our own lives. This is a skill so rare in fiction today, it's a pleasure to experience.

She had me laughing through my tears. This timeless use of humor to cover pain is always piercing and effective. Her prose is tight, as I mentioned, and she doesn't mince words to get across the message she has for us. There's no time wasted in gift wrap, but Ms Beard gives us her story in straight talk that magnifies its impact and humor. It's an unfliching tale, one of angst and emotional suffering...life and circumstances inflicting pain and epiphanies that are the essence of growing up, survived through a warped sense of humor and a mind not given over to the wellsprings of "insanesville."

I asked myself how such a book could be both enjoyable to read and hold such childhood nightmares at the same time. I could only come up with this: A writer of remarkable courage and gifts could only have written this through personal experience.

Ms Beard's protagonist, aptly and coincidently named Jo "after one of the "Little Women, but not the one who was (her) my favorite--Amy," is wise beyond her years. As the narrator of her own story, Jo brings us along with her in a journey that leads her into an awakening and a growing up that she must do....her mother having told her it's time she gets beyond being a "late bloomer." What seems sad is that she finally attains this putting aside of childhood, only to give up what's won in what I felt was a sort of acceptance of the inevitable. But, this is generally the outcome of coming-of-age, isn't it? All childhood illusions are crushed, the barriers of innocence and disbelief are torn down and our eyes are opened to reality for better or for worse.

I'm walking a tightrope here, being somewhat vague because this is a book that must be read to be grasped in its impact, which is both moving and lasting. Along the difficult road she treads, Jo finds lasting friendship and its meaning, her personal "calling," and a way to work out her emotional struggles and world-view through art. She begins to understand her parents and family dynamics, and that she has choices within it.

"Inzanesville" is a book that will touch your heart, make you laugh heartily; one that will stop you dead in your tracks and open your eyes. It will recall to you your own junior high years, absolutely, possibly including that 1960's basement den where lots of partying took place! And, if you happen to be one of those unfortunate children who have had to tread (perhaps still tread) the inelegant, ugly and treacherous waters of a dysfunctional family, it will give you something to think about. I was particularly impacted by Jo's constant worries nearly every day that her father was planning and attempting suicide.

This book will undoubtedly rank in my Top Ten Favorite Books of 2011. Despite its blend of the tragic with the hilarious, ultimately, it is downright fabulous reading! Jo Ann Beard is a truth-teller, and a court jester of a word spinner tossing out unexpected jolts of humor, catching us off guard, then, as the illusion of laughter begins to crumble, leaving us with a sinking feeling of contemplation and a sense of Jo's and the family's anxieties. Ms Beard is enchanting and brilliant with an uncanning frankness that's irresistible to readers.

I must add as an aside that Little, Brown and Co., does a tremendous job of chosing and publishing outstanding authors and books. I am a fan of independent authors and their books, as well. However, the caliber of author Hachette Publishing has been chosing is, bar none, excellent. It's almost a given that books published by this historic and traditional publishing house are of the finest quality.

Do yourself a favor this year and read "Inzanesville" by Jo Ann Beard. It is fabulous!

*I was provided an Arc by Little, Brown, however I received no compensation nor am I required to write any reviews or comments not of my own personal view. All of my views are honest and are my own. show less

Welcome to the definitive trip inside the mind of a unnamed ninth grade girl. Everything thought and feeling here is both universal and unique. She lives in Zanesville, a dying industrial town. She luckily has a best friend, Flea - the type that instantly understands you, the one that your mother yells, "Is she sleeping over AGAIN?" She gets your alcoholic father and angry mother. She co-babysits the six kids of biker parents with you and is also too freaked out to call the Fire Department show more when one of the kids tries to burn down the house.

Then things change when a cheerleader overhears you and your friend talking in the bathroom at school and decides that you're both funny. And there are boys and an art teacher that introduces you to surrealism.

Maybe men won't, can't get this, but every woman should. Ninth grade girls probably won't read it until their cut glass memories of the pain and the flying heartbeats fade. But it's never too late to sink In Zanesville, one of the best coming-of-age novels ever. show less

My mother is sewing a button on my father’s shirt while he’s still wearing it. “I was having this terrible feeling,” she says, “that she’d be this forty-year-old woman, going around telling people that we took her d-o-l-l away from her.” She leans down to bite off the thread. My father tests his new button and it works perfectly. “In three days she won’t remember she even knew that d-o-l-l,” he predicts.

But of course Beard remembers, and tells, in this 1998 non-linear show more collection of linked personal essays. They’re coming-of-age essays, where growing up is as likely to occur at thirty as at thirteen or three. Each age is rendered perfectly, as are the characters and the 1970s-80s period details of small-town Midwest.

Among the boys of Beard’s youth are Hal, that beloved d-o-l-l her mother’s oldest sister bullies her mother into throwing away; teenage boys who mostly ignore her at backwoods parties; her father who drinks and disappears for weeks at a time; Eric: boyfriend, husband, …; and a school-shooter who kills Beard’s colleagues in the University of Iowa physics department on a day she’s gone home early to care for her aging dog. There are girls, too -- aunts and cousins; her older, nemesis sister; her mother who smokes on every page; a lifelong best friend she consults while writing these essays.

I love these people and their settings, love Beard’s writing and want more. I've just read her new novel In Zanesville, the first half of which feels exactly like these essays. I'm off to scour the Internet for anything else she's written. show less

http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2013/01/review-in-zanesville-by-jo-ann-beard.....

Jo Ann Beard's In Zanesville owned my soul this past weekend. Her unnamed narrator, a 14 year old girl, is staggering through a life on the brink of collapse. And Beard's debut novel will haunt and encourage you long after you've put it back on the top shelf of your bookcase.

In Zanesville opens with a simple, horrifying scene: the narrator and her best friend, Felicia (called Flea), are babysitting a family show more of children, when the oldest boy sets a fire in the bathroom of the family's home. The two girls call the narrator's mother rather than the fire department- mom calls the fire department, and the house is saved.

And then the boy-arsonist's father gets home. The girls watch in stunned silence as the father presses the boy's hand onto the lit stove as punishment.

With that as precedent, the narrator's life isn't so bad.

Sure, her father is an alcoholic who disappears for days at a time. Sure, her mother is falling apart under the stress of raising three children. Sure, her friends occupy the middle rung of the adolescent social ladder, neither beautiful cheerleaders nor complete social outcasts.

But the narrator is clever- she's good enough in math classes to be the top of the regular class, though she's not quite good enough for the advanced class- and she's able to navigate the complex social rules of junior high. Most importantly, she's unaware of how disastrously unusual her life is.

Beard took on two distinct, daunting challenges with In Zanesville: to write in the voice of a child, and to write a story of mundane suspense.

The narrator is still very much a child, with a child's understanding of human nature, sex and consequences. But she's growing, and Beard lets her grow slowly. Sometimes, like when she finds a home for a stray kitten, her childlike approach invites moments of wonder. At other times, her lack of understanding in almost physically uncomfortable for the reader; when she and Flea throw food at a cafeteria worker to "win" another few days of detention, so they can have a second chance to talk with the boys there, the armchair-psychologist in me sees a girl acting out for the attention of her alcoholic father and aloof mother. Wonderfully, Beard finds just the right tone for her narrator, neither childish nor a little adult.

Beard's second tremendous success is to fill her narrator's life with ordinary but suspenseful events: life when dad is missing, out on a binge; life when dad is bingeing at home; the complicated relationships between the three children; the unfathomable relationship with her mother. I suppose what I'm saying is that Beard got me to care about her narrator. show less