Jessica Anya Blau

Almost Famous meets Daisy Jones and the Six in this funny, wise, and tender novel about a fourteen-year-old girl's coming of age in 1970s Baltimore, caught between her straight-laced family and the progressive family she nannies for--who happen to be secretly hiding a famous rock star and his movie star wife for the summer. "Funny, sad, sharp, charming, surprising, big-hearted and true both to its characters and its time." -- Nick Hornby In 1970s Baltimore, fourteen-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her family's subscription to the Broadway Showtunes of the Month record club. Shy, quiet, and bookish, she's glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Jane's mother says. In a respectable house. The house may look respectable on the outside, but inside it's a literal and figurative mess: clutter on every surface, Impeachment: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers on the doors, cereal and takeout for dinner. And even more troublesome (were Mary Jane's mother to know, which she does not): the doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important job--helping a famous rock star dry out. A week after Mary Jane starts, the rock star and his movie star wife move in. Over the course of the summer, Mary Jane introduces her new household to crisply ironed clothes and a family dinner schedule, and has a front-row seat to a liberal world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (not to mention group therapy). Caught between the lifestyle she's always known and the future she's only just realized is possible, Mary Jane will arrive at September with a new idea about what she wants out of life, and what kind of person she's going to be.

A Novel

Mary Jane

amber

Eliza adkins 

Every now and then Sheba -who was sitting beside me- reached out her hand and squeezed my shoulder or arm, as if to make sure I knew I was included.

Now I smelled like Sheba. I sniffed again, Breathing in Sheba's scent made the world momentarily fall away. 

It had never before occurred to me that sometimes dishes weren't just dishes, that things could represent ideas in more powerful ways than the ideas themselves. 

Sheba and Jimmy snnck out before the service ended. As I walked home with my parents, I couldn't stop thinking about the way they had looked at me while I sang: as if I mattered, as if I were seen. 

To feel something was to feel alive. And to feel alive was starting to feel like love. 

Until I met Jimmy, I hadn't understood that people you loved could do things you didn't love. And, still, you could keep loving them

I couldn’t wait to get to the Cones so I could rip off the false self and just be me. Barefoot. Singing. Cooking dinner. Wearing a bikini. Playing with Izzy’s hair. 

That I had seen that adults weren't always right and could be just as confused and make just as many mistakes as kids? That I knew that when people messed up, they still deserved our love and affection? 

And I also wanted to tell her how much I loved cooking for the Cones. How cooking for people you love feels less like a chore and more like a way of saying I love you. 

Mary Jane quotes

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