[close] With The Miss America Family, Julianna Baggott (Girl Talk) gives readers the literary equivalent of the film American Beauty. Baggott shines a light on the dark side of the American family with this quirky novel narrated in turns by a mother and son. Mother Pixie is a retired beauty queen and an almost-murderer; son Ezra is an awkward teen. Ezra's chapters are long on action: he loses his virginity, fights with his stepfather, finds out his father is gay, and keeps track of his kid sister. Pixie's chapters tend toward long, philosophical monologues about beauty and femininity. Some of these are dead-on, as when she remembers the first time she realized she was beautiful: "Everybody started acting like I had a gun, like I was armed and I could kill them if I wanted. It makes strangers awfully nice to you." Other times, her narrative slips into a simplistic, almost adolescent critique of suburban dysfunction: "I'd always really wanted to be Miss America so that I could have the perfect family." Is the failure of the American dream really news to anyone? --Claire Dederer [close]