A Room on Lorelei Street

Mary E. Pearson is the author of The Adoration of Jenna Fox, which is one of my favorite books.

This book is right on the mark regarding a child of an alcoholic and the emotions as a result of a highly dysfunctional adult-- the guilt, the anger, the abandonment, the overwhelming struggle of sadness. Writing with this depth of power and knowledge is difficult to portray without experience, and therefore I believe the author might have real life experience regarding this complicated issue.

When seventeen year old Zoe simply can no longer accept the terrible life of enabling and taking care of her alcoholic mother, somehow she finds the courage to rent "a room of her own."

Both mother and father were alcoholics. When her father dies, her show more mother spins more and more out of control. Responsible for her little brother, Zoe's heart aches when he is taken away and raised by family members who want him, but claim there is no room for her. Left behind, Zoe's grandmother demands that Zoe be responsible for Zoe's mother.

The grandmother is a real piece of work -- a manipulator, a user and abuser. Emotionally trying to thwart Zoe's independence, Zoe remains strong.

This is a wonderful story of hope, of struggle and of courage. Zoe longed for things many children take for granted. She desperately wanted not to pay the bills for her mother. She wanted a mother who could go to work and function. She wanted a parent to attend school functions. She wanted someone to love her, to listen to her rather than self absorption and neglect.

Zoe is strong. She is a survivor. I loved and related to Zoe.

This is well written and highly recommended!

Five Stars show less

Zo—eeeee has an alcoholic mother who forgets a lot of little details, like paying rent. “A real room with real floors and walls. A room for sleeping and reading and dancing and…in her imaginations she has pictured the room, but she has never seen herself in it.” (p. 22). Zoe is forced to deal with details. She pays the bills. She takes care of the car registration. She deals with the people who haven’t been paid. And she is tired of being the adult.

When Zoe decides to rent a room of her own,

“She pauses, startled, but absorbed in the simple sensation of her feet on a smooth, clean floor. She looks around the room. Is it really hers? Clean. Empty of past. She sits on the window seat and props her feet on a lavender pillow. show more Before laundry, before anything, she needs to sit. She needs to be. Just be. She closes her eyes, leaning back against the alcove. Zoe. Zoe listening to evening chirps through an open window. Zoe fingering a golden tassel. Zoe tasting space. Zoe owning the room.” (p. 113).

Zoe quickly discovers, however, that distancing herself physically from her family does NOT distance her emotionally and now she has rent to pay on top of all her emotional luggage. Pearson’s book sings. Its exquisite language paints rooms and characters with vivid three-dimensional colors making it difficult to believe that we are reading fiction. A Room on Lorelei Street is a must buy for sophisticated high school readers and one of my early favorites for Printz consideration. show less

I have found that I am really getting interested in reading YA lately. And that being said, I really hit the jackpot with this one. This book was such an emotional read that at times I felt like I was almost holding my breath. The main character went through so much in her mere seventeen years of living, and her struggle completely broke my heart.

A Room on Lorelei Street takes place in a town called Ruby, Texas. It is a tired, small town full of basically nothing, where Ruby is living with her alcoholic mother as the book begins. Zoe has never really had the chance to be a child. Her father died mysteriously - hinting at a possible suicide, her mother crawled inside a bottle, and her beloved brother is sent to live with her aunt and show more uncle who have no room for her. Her grandmother is overbearing and manipulative, and Zoe is thrown into a life of being a caretaker to her mother. The author, Mary E. Pearson unfolds this hauntingly beautiful story of Zoe's life with such raw emotion that I will definitely not forget for a long time.

Zoe's life is one that no teenager should have to endure. Trying to take care of her mother, while working at the local diner and attending school proves to be more than Zoe can handle one day when a teacher mispronounces her name and Zoe blows a major gasket. It is at this point that Zoe realizes she has to make some changes if she is ever going to survive this life. She comes upon a house on Lorelei Street where she sees a room for rent sign. She keeps stopping by every day just to dream about the room and what it would be like to have someplace to call her own. One day she talks to the owner, and elderly woman named Opal. Opal is quite a character and I found her fast-becoming my favorite. She talks Zoe into taking the room, and the rest of the story is about Zoe's new struggle of how to make it on her own.

I can't think of anyone who would not fall in love with this story. I was captivated every second until I closed the back cover. It is a beautiful coming-of-age tale of a teenager's struggle to overcome the hand that life has dealt to her. The book is very well-written, and I can definitely understand why the author won the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Award for fiction for this wonderful book. I highly recommend this book. show less

Merideth says: A young woman saddled with acting as caretaker for her alcoholic mother struggles to create a place and life of her own in a rented room.

Zoe may only be seventeen, but she is old before her time. Having long ago assumed the role of parent for her fading, but still pretty mother, she struggles with wanting to be free of the responsibility and her need to make sure her mom is O.K. Coupled with her invisibility to other family members and guilt about her father's death, Zoe feels the need to make herself seen. This leads to self-destructive behaviors (like smoking and sleeping around) and impulsive actions when things get to be too much. One such action is renting a room from a friendly eccentric, which Zoe sees as a haven. show more However, it's hard for a seventeen year old with a part time job to live on her own, and bad decisions soon find Zoe broke and desperate.

This book is very beautifully written. Zoe's voice is authentic, and the situation she finds herself in is heartbreakingly realistic. My main problem with this book is how predictable it was. I didn't feel surprised or shocked by any of Zoe's choices or the situation she found herself in; instead, there was just a sense of 'it figures'. As far as Teen Problem Novels go, you could do much worse, but don't spend a lot of time looking for novelty here. (cross-posted from MeriJenBen) show less

A young woman saddled with acting as caretaker for her alcoholic mother struggles to create a place and life of her own in a rented room.

Zoe may only be seventeen, but she is old before her time. Having long ago assumed the role of parent for her fading, but still pretty mother, she struggles with wanting to be free of the responsibility and her need to make sure her mom is O.K. Coupled with her invisibility to other family members and guilt about her father's death, Zoe feels the need to make herself seen. This leads to self-destructive behaviors (like smoking and sleeping around) and impulsive actions when things get to be too much. One such action is renting a room from a friendly eccentric, which Zoe sees as a haven. However, it's show more hard for a seventeen year old with a part time job to live on her own, and bad decisions soon find Zoe broke and desperate.

This book is very beautifully written. Zoe's voice is authentic, and the situation she finds herself in is heartbreakingly realistic. My main problem with this book is how predictable it was. I didn't feel surprised or shocked by any of Zoe's choices or the situation she found herself in; instead, there was just a sense of "it figures". As far as Teen Problem Novels go, you could do much worse, but don't spend a lot of time looking for novelty here. show less

A Room on Lorelei Street

The story starts out as we meet Zoe. Zoe is the main character that faces difficult
internal conflicts that most teenage girls don’t even think about. She, like many other
high school students, has a part-time job. However, most have that job in order to have a
little extra spending money. Unlike the general population, Zoe is living off of her part-
time job which is waiting tables at a greasy spoon restaurant, Murray’s Diner. She makes
very little money, so her budget is under more stress than an air traffic controller at JFK
International Airport. With her expenses bursting at the seams, Zoe is forced to drive
with her car’s gas needle pointing at empty, buy extremely cheap food, and cut down on
her show more cigarettes.

In the very beginning of the book the author makes it clear that Zoe is living
with her mother and her mother only. That wouldn’t be an issue if her mother wasn’t an
alcoholic. As her mother’s drinking becomes chronically worse, she stops going to work
all together. Also, she begins to sleep in the bathroom because she will be vehemently
vomiting throughout the night and into the morning. Zoe makes it clear that she is
anything but happy with her mother. She has basically grown up by herself and is fed up
with her mother’s drunken ways. And att that note, Zoe finds a one bedroom flat/apartment
on Lorelei Street for rent. She inquires about the new housing opportunity and is pleased
with the price point, a mere $150 a month. She thinks it over and then leaves her mom a
note saying, “There is Chinese in the refrigerator. The dishes are done. The utility bill is
paid. I don’t live here anymore. I live at 373 Lorelei Street. I love you, Zoe.” This note
does wonders in describing Zoe. It shows her sporadic and heat-of-the-moment attitude
and her prominent forgetfulness that things do in fact have long-term effects.
With bills piling up, Zoe wonders if living on her own was really her best option.
She had worked half of the month to earn $90, and she neglected to realize she still had
a license plate fee due in the amount of $88. Her month’s rent deadline date was coming
up soon, and it’s hard to pay for that without any money. However, her only option is
to ask a man that she waits on at Murray’s Diner. With the quid pro quo arrangement
implied, Zoe has to make a tough internal decision to have coitus with this beastly, dirt
bag of a man or maintain her chastity and surrender her apartment and her free will.
The ending is full of twists and unexpected events that all wrap up into one unforeseen

I would recommend this book to someone over the age of thirteen. Because of
some explicit language and drug/alcohol references I would not feel comfortable telling
anyone lower than seventh grade to partake in the reading of this book. show less

his is a teen fiction companion to Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. Like many teens, Zoe dreams of moving out, but it is a nightmare at home (dead father, alcoholic mother, and suffocating grandmother) that lets her make the move. And while there's the nice old lady (Opal) she rents the room from to lend support, and some friends, Zoe truly feels on her own. Just as much as Hatchet, this is a survival story as Zoe works as a waitress, trying to put food on her table and gas in her tank, pay sports fees at school, etc. The book is lyrical while describing her plight, yet Pearson doesn't pull her punches at the end when this young woman desperate for money makes a shocking decision. This novel is show more similar as well to Shelia O'Connor's Where No Gods Came about a young woman in comparable circumstances. Review originally appeared in Novelist. show less