Jessica Anya Blau

The story of a teenaged girl in the seventies whose home-life is buttoned-up and whose mother seems interested only in doing all her house-wifery exactly right. When Mary Jane gets a job babysitting for new neighbors for the summer, she gets introduced to a whole different way of living that includes rock and roll, lazy housekeeping, communication--and celebrity and addiction. I loved this easy but substantive read. I thought Blau captured beautifully the appeal and the danger of the world show more Mary Jane was being introduced to. Mary Jane's mother hasn't got it all wrong, and the neighbors haven't got it all right, and that dichotomy is never lost even as the reader (probably) finds the neighbors' lifestyle much more fun and, in some ways, more healthy. Recommended. show less

If Carl Hiaasen lived in California instead of Florida, he may have written a book like Jessica Anya Blau's The Wonder Bread Summer.

Set in 1983, when I was a few years older than the protagonist Allie Dodgson, the story takes place in Berkeley and Los Angeles. The story opens a bang, with 20 year-old Allie trapped in the back room of the clothing store she works in by the owner Jonas, who is trying to get Allie to snort some coke and take her clothes off. Yeah, it's that kind of book.

Jonas show more has not paid Allie the wages she is owed, and Allie needs the money or she will be thrown out of college, so Allie takes the Wonder Bread bag filled with coke and runs away. Maybe the coke she snorted altered her judgement, but she does not turn back. Her plan is to borrow her friend Beth's car, and sell enough coke to make the money Jonas owes her. Then she will return the rest of the coke to Jonas and all will be cool.

Well, that was the plan. She finds a surfer who wants to buy some of the coke, but she has no idea how much to sell it for. She goes home to her father's restaurant in LA, only to find it closed. Her mother is a groupie for a has-been rock band, and wants to share the coke with the band.

Allie goes on a double date with Beth and ends up almost overdosing her date- Roger, a paraplegic porn producer. Jonas has dispatched someone to kill Allie and get his coke back, but thank goodness Roger and his kindly minions are there to help her.

Oh yeah, and Allie meets 80s rocker Billy Idol and has a romantic sexual experience with him. (Blau's characterization of Idol is charming. He should sent her a nice gift basket as a thank you.)

There is a wacky premise, a chase across California, guns, drugs, sex, surfer dudes who want the coke, dysfunctional parenting, Allie's Chinese grandmother's wise sayings sprinkled in, and a very nice Hispanic family whom Allie contemplates moving in with permanently. If any of this sounds like something you find funny, then you will enjoy The Wonder Bread Summer. It did remind me of Carl Hiaasen, with its cast of comic characters, some involved in criminal matters.

I laughed my way through this novel, and it's a great, quick beach read. I finished it in two days poolside. It's not a book for everyone, but if you are not easily offended, you'll laugh too. When you finish it, you'll want to listen to Billy Idol while craving some of Consuela's yummy pan de yema and hot chocolate. show less

This book made me very happy. Fourteen-year-old Mary Jane comes from a conservative, wealthy, patriarchal family. Her mother has instructed her well in all aspects of housekeeping. She spends the summer nannying a well-loved but fairly neglected 5-year-old girl and in the process becomes indispensable to the unconventional family and their famous house guests. (Is Sheba Cher?) Everything about Mary Jane makes me happy from her no-nonsense approach to housekeeping to her openness to varying show more life philosophies. We all need more Mary Jane in our lives. show less

this was an utterly charming coming of age story that i couldn't put down. seeing the naive, conservative mary jane being exposed to the loose, liberal cone family and realize that other value systems and ways of life are ok felt so true and was so fun to watch. (it reminded me a bit of my meeting people in college who drank and smoked and skipped classes, but were still good people, unlike what i'd assumed of rule breakers. mary jane learned this before i did.) i loved being inside her head show more as she navigated this new world and as she both learned and misunderstood so much. blau so perfectly captured this age where she both was a little adult and knew so much but was also still a child and had so much to learn.

mary jane and izzy were especially enjoyable to be around. i feel like, in many ways, mary jane at 14 is a better mother to izzy than i am to my son, and i can learn a lot from both of their attitudes and how everything they do is so full of love. sheba was great, too, but i couldn't get enough of izzy.

i really, really enjoyed everything about this. (the audio reader was great, too. so good that as much as i liked this, i'm not sure i would have liked it quite as much if i hadn't listened to it.) even the ending, which may be a bit unrealistic - would mary jane's mother really have relaxed that much? really changed that much in such a short period of time? maybe. maybe not. but i appreciate the sentiment. show less