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In Zanesville

3.54 of 5 stars 3.54 · rating details · 2,231 ratings · 492 reviews

The beguiling fourteen-year-old narrator of IN ZANESVILLE is a late bloomer. She is used to flying under the radar-a sidekick, a third wheel, a marching band dropout, a disastrous babysitter, the kind of girl whose Eureka moment is the discovery that "fudge" can't be said with an English accent.

Luckily, she has a best friend, a similarly undiscovered girl with whom she sha...more

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published April 25th 2011 by Little, Brown and Company (first published April 7th 2011)

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Mar 24, 2012 Ruth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Despite the age of the narrator, this book seems less a book for teenagers and more of a novel for the 14 year old in all of us. Set in the 1970s, In Zanesville perfectly captures (in hilarious detail) that awkward push-and-pull time between being a kid and becoming a full blown teenager. From the first paragraph about an ill-fated turn at babysitting a local family of hoodlums, the writing is smart and funny, and makes you wish you were friends with the narrator and her best friend Felicia (aka...more

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May 15, 2011 Kristina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, favorites, loved-em, my-book, literary-fiction

This book starts out like a house on fire---really. The first chapter begins with the 14 yr old narrator (who is never named by the author) and her best friend babysitting an unruly group of siblings when one of the children sets the bathroom trash can on fire. Felicia ("Flea") and her friend panic and respond to the smoke by herding all the kids outside, and then by removing all the animals (snakes, Tarantulas, mice)to the front lawn. Then they decide whose mother to call because mothers are th...more This book starts out like a house on fire---really. The first chapter begins with the 14 yr old narrator (who is never named by the author) and her best friend babysitting an unruly group of siblings when one of the children sets the bathroom trash can on fire. Felicia ("Flea") and her friend panic and respond to the smoke by herding all the kids outside, and then by removing all the animals (snakes, Tarantulas, mice)to the front lawn. Then they decide whose mother to call because mothers are the ones with the answers: "Forget fathers, forget teachers: our mothers are the ones with the answers, the only people who know something about everything, although it's true that the answers are never that great and that both mothers are incredibly bossy and both have at least one disturbing trait." They decide to call the narrator's mother (from the smoking house) and the girls argue about exactly how much smoke there actually is in the house until the mother gets irritated, yells at her daughter to call the fire station, and leaves work to go to the house herself to take charge.

This is a wonderful book, one of my better impulse buys at B&N. The writing is superb. The author accurately captures early teenage feelings of angst, anger, disappointment, and sadness. The girls talk exactly the way I remember talking at that age (although these teenagers are growing up in the 70s; I am a child of the 80s)and the relationship between girls is spot-on. Neither of these girls (Felicia and her friend the unnamed narrator) are angels; they lie, get into trouble, and are usually doing the opposite of what they told their parents they'd be doing. But they are likeable, funny, and a pleasure to spend almost 300 pages with.

Felicia likes to eat at her friend's house but her friend prefers to eat at her house and they often compare the previous evening's menus. The narrator generally eats Jell-O for dinner, no matter what her mother fixes. This small exchange between them makes me laugh every time:

"What did you have?"
"Jello-O," I tell her.
"I know, but what did they have?"
"Some kind of Transylvanian meat," I say. My grandmother's second husband is a butcher, as crabby as he is bald. A tongue isn't even the worst thing he's given us.
"Lucky," she says. "We had pork and beans and green beans. I said to my mother, 'These are both beans,' but she didn't care."

Another scene I particularly love is the moment that the narrator realizes (with horror) that being in the school's marching band is the most detrimental social activity she could engage in and decides to quit (with her friend Flea) in the middle of the parade ("I hadn't realized before, but now I do: We've made a terrible mistake. Band is weird.") I sometimes cringe at the situations they get into or the dumb decisions they make (they being Flea and the narrator), I understand why they do what they do.

The dialogue is very well-written and natural and often quite funny. I highly recommend this book. It is often humorous, but the narrator and her friend also have to deal with the adult problems of alcoholism and death, along with surviving the teenage problems of popularity and boys and what to do when your face is asymmetrical.

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May 05, 2011 Athira (Reading on a Rainy Day) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, source-review, fiction, f-general, source-own, personal-library

In Zanesville is a coming-of-age story about an unnamed fourteen-year old protagonist who revels in being a sidekick. She stays with an over-stressed mother, a drunk father, an annoying elder sister and a helpful younger brother. Our protagonist and Felicia (or Flea, as she is sometimes known) are best friends who know each other really well, and they frequently sleepover at each others place. Felicia isn't too popular either, though relatively, she is. When the pair are together, people look at...more In Zanesville is a coming-of-age story about an unnamed fourteen-year old protagonist who revels in being a sidekick. She stays with an over-stressed mother, a drunk father, an annoying elder sister and a helpful younger brother. Our protagonist and Felicia (or Flea, as she is sometimes known) are best friends who know each other really well, and they frequently sleepover at each others place. Felicia isn't too popular either, though relatively, she is. When the pair are together, people look at Felicia and ask stuff. For instance, when events get very out-of-control at babysitting one day, the mother looks at Felicia and demands an explanation. Our heroine is clearly very used to being ignored, and it suits her fine. Until, one party at a cheerleader's house leads to her being isolated even by Flea, causing her to realize that she took her time with her best friend for granted.

I really liked this book. A lot! The protagonist of In Zanesville doesn't have a name. In this NPR post, Jo Ann Beard mentions that she related so much to the narrator that it didn't occur to her that she had to name her. Of course, that makes it hard for me to review the book, but I feel it worked really well for the book. There was a stronger sense of "I" in this book as I read it - as the author says, it's hard not to relate to the narrator. After closing the book, it made me relive my teen years, remembering all the fun and the heartbreaks.

In Zanesville focuses on the early teenage years, but it's really not a young adult book. Think Finny, The Secret Life of Bees and Saving Ceecee Honeycutt. This book is set in junior high school - the time of some of the most wonderful discoveries in life, and also possibly the most angst-ridden ones. The narrator's life strongly reminded me of my own junior high school years - the fascination with dating, boys, girl-friends we like to consider our best friends forever, the cliques, the jocks, parties that are no longer frilly but more fun, sexy, and naughty. And then the downsides - the jealousy, the obsession with the looks department, the clash with parents, the fights with the best friends, the association with the cliques. All in all - a wonderful look at all the drama that's common in those years.

This book also turned out to be very hilarious! As in laugh-out-loud funny. There is an innocence in those years that makes the whole experience laughable on retrospection. Both Felicia and our narrator manage to lure a couple of guys they meet at detention, without the guys ever having been aware of the girls' existence previously - I realize now how dating was really easier then than now, but in those years, it was harder than a math exam. When this 14-year old reminisces over the time when she was "young", I realized that no matter what our age, we always consider ourselves as old. And yet, interlaced through the incredible humor, there is a quiet yearning that you could feel. Both Felicia and the narrator yearned for more. They looked to each other for support. So when Felicia does something perfectly normal but which ends up making the narrator lonely, there's a frisson that appears between the two. Even at this point, the book doesn't slacken in humor, and yet I never stopped feeling sad for what she was going through. My only complaint or rather jarring note was that this is the point where the eccentric art teacher comes in and where our heroine throws herself entirely into art. It reminded me of Speak, but that's an unfair comparison, because we do tend to throw ourselves into some form of art when we are emotional.

In short, this is a wonderful coming-of-age novel of a young girl and her friend, as their friendship is tested in a way neither of them foresaw. It is also about the fears that rattle any teen especially with respect to the fragility of her own family - there is that gun in our narrator's home which she is worried could end up in her father's hands in one moment of extreme emotion. In Zanesville also does amazing justice to the minor characters - I'm glad they weren't mere puppets but were crucial to the storyline. I loved that the author portrayed the mother and the sister strongly and put across the family dynamics really well. I was checking through my goodreads shelf, and one of my friends had shelved the book as "the good old days", which best describes the book. Through a very engaging writing style, the author managed to transport me to those good old days that I hated then but would love to relive all over again.(less)

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Nov 04, 2011 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: library-book

Beard's style is very accessible while being almost deceptively simple. Her dry sense of humor and interesting characters kept me very entertained, and she did an excellent job of conjuring up the drama that surrounds the day in a life of junior high girls. I also liked that this was set in the 70s and often found myself nodding in agreement or laughing at her observations about that decade (much like watching a Mad Men episode and thinking "OMG, I totally remember when people used to do that!")...more

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Jul 01, 2011 Kathy rated it 3 of 5 stars

The narrator's voice is strong and distinct in this coming of age story set in the 70's. She is about the same age as I was at the time the novel is set and the details about what the world was like (particularly the world of early adolescence) at that time are painfully accurate.

This is a solid 3.5 based on these two things alone, there just really is not much of a story. Jo (maybe, you aren't ever completely sure if that is her name) tells the tales of friendship, family, growing up and leavin...more

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Mar 16, 2013 John Beck rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed, top-shelf, fiction

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 of chi...more 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 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.(less)

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Jan 18, 2013 Persephone rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of my Facebook pals is a school librarian, so her postings are pithier than some I could mention, that is, she doesn't share glorified chain letters, urban legends masquerading as real events, nor quotes attributed to the wrong people. A couple of months ago, she posted a link to a Publishers' Weekly item entitled "The Top 10 Essays Since 1950".

I had a look and the one that really got under my skin was by Jo Ann Beard, a description of a day no one should have involving a dying pet, a dead r...more One of my Facebook pals is a school librarian, so her postings are pithier than some I could mention, that is, she doesn't share glorified chain letters, urban legends masquerading as real events, nor quotes attributed to the wrong people. A couple of months ago, she posted a link to a Publishers' Weekly item entitled "The Top 10 Essays Since 1950".

I had a look and the one that really got under my skin was by Jo Ann Beard, a description of a day no one should have involving a dying pet, a dead relationship, and an incident that resulted in the deaths of half a dozen of her co-workers. It originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1996 and it's called "The Fourth State of Matter". I really recommend that you follow the link and read it; it's clear, engrossing, heart-breaking.

I recognized a voice I wanted to hear again, so I immediately checked the catalogue of my local public library and put a hold on In Zanesville, a novel Beard published in 2011, about that terrifying time when a girl feels her way over the chasm between childhood and adolescence.

There are three Zanesvilles in the United States; this one appears to be a tiny community south of Springfield, Illinois. (The towns of Heyworth and Waynesville are mentioned.) The time covers the months between the summer of 1972 and the following winter. ("Ooh Child" is called an "old" song and "Ben" [released the summer of 1972] is quoted.) Our heroine, whose name may be "Jan", is definitely not "Joan", and is in all likelihood Jo Ann, is fourteen, gifted, and a late-bloomer. In 1972's small-town America, this means she is still a little girl emotionally when the book opens. We follow her through a series of seemingly unimportant adolescent incidents which are, of course, life-changing to her, and by the end, we are hearing the thoughts and ideas of a teenager.

This is not a Young Adult novel. This is closer to being a memoir from someone who remembers exactly what it was like to be no longer pre-adolescent, but only barely -- and to have no idea what to do about it. Beard writes skillfully and truthfully. It may be lacking in sex and violence, but it is, nevertheless, a book for grown-ups.

The audio-book is inventively read by Jo Anna Perrin.(less)

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Aug 06, 2012 Everyday eBook rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Everyday by: John Abrahams

Nothing spectacular happens in Jo Ann Beard's debut novel, In Zanesville. There is no murder, no car crash, no divorce, no vampire, and no lightning strike. Rather, we get an unnamed ninth-grade narrator, on the border between being a kid and being a teenager, dealing with all the mundane aspects of a dysfunctional family amid small-town American life in the 1970s. And -- song screeches to a halt -- this is where this funny, awkward book reminds us to give thanks, every day, that we don't have t...more Nothing spectacular happens in Jo Ann Beard's debut novel, In Zanesville. There is no murder, no car crash, no divorce, no vampire, and no lightning strike. Rather, we get an unnamed ninth-grade narrator, on the border between being a kid and being a teenager, dealing with all the mundane aspects of a dysfunctional family amid small-town American life in the 1970s. And -- song screeches to a halt -- this is where this funny, awkward book reminds us to give thanks, every day, that we don't have to go back and relive our teenage years.

The main character is a completely regular girl, who babysits (mostly uneventfully, except when the house catches on fire), plays flute in the marching band (until she decides that she looks like a dork and drops out -- in the middle of a parade), whose dad drinks (probably uneventfully, except why do those shotgun shells keep reappearing in the story?), just like anyone else in a no-name, cornfield town, eighty miles from anything. This is hardly a slam against rural life. Rather, it is a geography of anywhere; the exact same dynamic occurs in a typical suburb or a big city. There is a defined social order in this anyplace; the narrator and her best friend Felicia ("Flea") aren't cool, and they know it.

The plot's pivotal point, if it can be called that, occurs after a funny interaction between our heroine and Patti Michaels, a new kid in town, in the girls' bathroom. Patti, a cheerleader, invites our heroine and Flea to a birthday party. Wait. Remember the rules from being a teenager? "Crap! The problem with Patti Michaels is that she not only doesn't know she isn't cheerleader material, but she doesn't know who should and shouldn't be invited to one of their parties. This is a disaster."

Beard, who previously wrote the deeply moving story collection The Boys of My Youth, has a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, and she has perfectly captured the anxiety, sadness, and humor that lurks just beneath the surface of all of our lives. The crushes, the keg party, the art project, the silent treatment: Like a modern tarot deck, these are the events that shape us, and this novel helps us appreciate how we made it through.

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Jul 01, 2012 Marjorie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I"m reading this on the strength of Martha Ackmann's recommendation, and it does not disappoint! I'm about halfway through. I think that the strongest feeling that I have about it right now is how accurately it captures the reality of growing up in a community/neighborhood...you never know what is going on behind closed doors. The narrator's dad is an alcoholic. She babysits for the kids of neglectful, abusive parents. Every family has its own story and the stories are not always nice ones. Scho...more

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Jun 26, 2012 Joella www.cinjoella.com rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-for-grownups, realistic, historical, yalsa-best-of-the-best

This was my 23rd book for the YALSA's Best Books Reading Challenge. This was one of the Alex Awards...which is a book published for adults that young adults would enjoy reading.

This was a tough one for me to get through. And I fell asleep reading it multiple times. This could in part be due to the fact that I had just gotten home from vacation. But also because I just couldn't get into this book.

It starts off when the 14-year-old narrator and her friend are babysitting some kids who set the hous...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Louisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: big-kid, girly-as-shit, historical-fiction, i-love-awkward-teenagers-in-fiction, ya

As a kid who did most of their crucial growing up in the dire time of the late eighties and early nineties, I've always felt a tremendous nostalgia for all things that came out of the late seventies. As anyone who does know me is already painfully aware, I've basically spent my whole life wanting to be Parker Posey's character in "Dazed and Confused".

So needless to say, Jo Ann Beard got me at the detailed list of clothing the nameless fourteen year old narrator and her friend Felicia put on laya...more

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Feb 27, 2012 Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ya-lit

Four Stars for "In Zanesville". I thought the novel had some really compelling and tense moments. Beard is great at creating tension in a scene. But because although the novel touched on some interesting and appropriate issues for adolescents, it kind of jumps all over and sometimes, maybe if it tried to do less could focus more on some plot and character development. I really enjoyed Beard's characters, i only wish she gave us more of them. It wasn't like some of the other young adult novels I...more

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Jan 16, 2012 Judith rated it 3 of 5 stars

Teen fiction----which I am a sucker for----at its finest. The protagonist is a young girl growing up in a small town in Illinois in the 1970s. How could I resist, huh? The whole adolescent angst is there: the intensity of those hormonal drives which made you alternately hate and/or love every person you knew with a supreme intensity; the thought that your dinky little town was the whole universe; the belief that parents held all the power and were totally ignorant tyrants; the wide-eyed innocenc...more

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Dec 17, 2011 AJ Conroy marked it as to-read

From NPR Review:
I don't think I'll ever forget the unnamed, perfectly realized 14-year-old narrator of In Zanesville. It's a marvelous reading experience. Jo Ann Beard, whose first book was The Boys of My Youth, a dozen autobiographical essays, has captured the terror, joy, uncertainties and angst of growing up in small-town 1970s America. Best friends, big sisters, boys, baby-sitting, band uniforms, clothes-buying expeditions — Beard has captured what being 14 is like. And the writing is simpl...more

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Dec 13, 2011 Chris Blake rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jo Ann Beard's debut novel, In Zanesville, takes an overworked concept--the coming-of-age story--and gives it a fresh perspective with a story that crackles with dry wit supplied by a precocious narrator.

Set in the 1970s in a gritty Illinois suburb, In Zanesville centers on an unnamed narrator about to enter her freshman year in high school and her best friend Felicia, called "Flea." The narrator is at that awkward age, between childhood and adolescence. The story begins over the summer when the...more Jo Ann Beard's debut novel, In Zanesville, takes an overworked concept--the coming-of-age story--and gives it a fresh perspective with a story that crackles with dry wit supplied by a precocious narrator.

Set in the 1970s in a gritty Illinois suburb, In Zanesville centers on an unnamed narrator about to enter her freshman year in high school and her best friend Felicia, called "Flea." The narrator is at that awkward age, between childhood and adolescence. The story begins over the summer when the narrator, who is identified only twice as "Jo" and then "Joan," and Flea land a babysitting job that ends disastrously when one of the six unruly children in their care sets fire to the upstairs bathroom.

The two friends are inseparable. They are self-described late bloomers, a phrase the narrator hates. "It sounds old fashioned and vaguely rank, like something a prairie woman would wear under her sweaty calico dress," she writes. Their exploits include sleepovers in a camper in Flea's backyard, hilarious efforts to save three stray cats, and trips downtown to buy clothes on lay away.

The main character's home life is grim. Her father is a drunk and her mother is moody and prone to lashing out at the children. In spite of this dysfunctional household, the main character maintains a quirky, lovable spirit and outlook toward life.

As the two girls begin high school, a rift develops. Caught between the worlds of the cheerleaders and the band nerds, the two girls hastily hatch a plan to quit the band. "In retrospect we probably should have quit band after the parade and not during it," she recalled. Later, they wrangle an invitation to a sleepover at a cheerleader's house. Felicia pairs off with one of the boys who sneak into the backyard from the woods, leaving the narrator alone and hurt. As she struggles with her feelings, she eventually makes her peace with Flea and finds solace from an unlikely source.

The strength of this novel is the sharply drawn main character, whom the author infuses with a wry and wise perspective. The humor leavens the main character's bleak home life.

The author of a memoir entitled, The Boys of My Youth, Beard graduated from the University of Iowa with a BA and an MFA and she teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and her writing has been published in The New Yorker.

Beard is a talented writer and I hope to read much more from her.

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Oct 14, 2011 Emma Bolden rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

OMG I CANNOT EVEN. I MEAN SERIOUSLY. THIS BOOK. JUST READ THE FIRST TWO SENTENCES AND YOU WILL KNOW WHY.

Though I have to admit I wonder a lot about why Beard called this a novel: the characters are clearly the people from The Boys of My Youth. I've read a lot on-line about her "unnamed" narrator, but, at one point, she pretty clearly states that her name is Jo (when she's talking about Little Women, she says one of the characters has her name and she's the one who shows up for another book -- wh...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Aaron Dev rated it 2 of 5 stars

The story revolves around a girl entering her 9nth grade in just another American town. With a dysfunctional family and a negative view of herself, this premise doesn't offer many surprises. The reason to read this - in my opinion - would be to pursue the language of its author. Her previous publication, a collection of essays entitled 'The Boys of My Youth' (the title of the last essay amongst them) was a superb feat.

While the book's opening pages are very engaging, its the best part in terms o...more

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Sep 04, 2011 Danielle rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This one was a little disapointing. I thought it would be better, but no luck. I like a book with a clear beginning and end and this one just didn't have that. The author jumped right in before you knew anything about the characters, and the ending wasn't satisfying at all. It just.....ended....with no real resolution of the issues in the book. Also, the beginning was a little disturbing. It opens with two teenage best friends babysitting for a family with five kids. The oldest boy starts a fire...more

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Jul 14, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jo Ann Beard writes beautifuly and her observations about family dynamics and being a teenager are impeccable. In Zanesville: A Novel is a must read for a few of the lines alone. She describes the oldest son (and terror) of her last babysitting job as follows: "We've always thought of Derek as a large, overbearing kid who shouts out words we've only seen in spray paint." That just rocks.

I would have loved to give this book five stars, but I couldn't bring myself to do it because, and I hate bein...more

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May 29, 2011 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Jo Ann Beard's debut novel In Zanesville landed in my lap during just the right fit of nostalgia.

The previous night I'd watched the teen-aged girl next door waiting to get picked up by a carload of friends. She and her mom and her mom's boyfriend had all busted out of the house with this contagious giddy Friday fever. The girl needed a couple flashlights. Her mom gave her one, she clicked it on and off, made swirls of light. Her mom's boyfriend went to his truck to get another.

"Don't lose it," h...more

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May 03, 2011 Mary (BookHounds) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, arc, young-adult

This book is such a love letter to the 70's which is a time I know well. I still can't figure out the name of the narrator, but I guess it might be "Jo" and maybe this book is a bit of memoir of the author. Jo is at that awkward period in every girls life which seems to happen around fourteen. Flea (Felicia), her best friend shares the horribleness of this age with Jo (the narrator). This should be a hit with adults as well as teens since it describes the angst and anguish that accompany this ag...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Yvonne rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have never read a book that took me back to my young teenage years as this one did. Jo Ann Beard captures the unfamiliar emotions of passing from girlhood into early teenage hood with real insight and ease. I was this girl, our wonderful narrator, who sees herself as a 'sidekick', doesn't think she's pretty, but has nice hair.
From the opening pages I was swept into Zanesville. A small town where people's lives are a bit hidden, but as in all small towns, known as well, making it difficult to h...more I have never read a book that took me back to my young teenage years as this one did. Jo Ann Beard captures the unfamiliar emotions of passing from girlhood into early teenage hood with real insight and ease. I was this girl, our wonderful narrator, who sees herself as a 'sidekick', doesn't think she's pretty, but has nice hair.
From the opening pages I was swept into Zanesville. A small town where people's lives are a bit hidden, but as in all small towns, known as well, making it difficult to hide.
The story is written like a series of vignettes, one situation leading into another but not always directly connected.
The sidekick and her best friend Felicia babysit a pack of children during the summer and the oldest boy sets toilet paper on fire in the bathroom and smoke fills the house. Too embarassed to call the fire department the girls call their mothers! The story of the fire is a gripping and poignant moment early in the book, but we never hear about the family again, and as in life, time marches on and that episode recedes into the past.

The girls sleep at each other's houses all summer and wait till everyone is asleep and then venture out into the night. As a teen and even now, that appeals to me. But at 13 or 14 I loved the night, loved the excitement of the change in everything that night brings. Louder noises, seeing in windows, catching glimpses of lives and seeing the houses, the town, the backyards differently. Like entering another world, which in fact it is.

The girls are in high school. They like boys. They want new clothes. They start to socialize, go to a few parties, try to find out where they fit in, how they fit in. The girls have no concept of adult lives, they see the world from their tiny perspective, as teens do and are prone to dramatics as teenage girls often are.

They both have family problems,who doesn't? Our narrators father is a drinker and disappears for days at a time. Her mother is always on her case, no one understands her, and she doesn't understand herself. Her sister and her fight constantly. Her life seems in turmoil, and even when she discovers the trick to algebra and gets moved to smart math class, she eventually gets moved back to regular math.

By the end of the book, which, for the narrator, is the start of her young teenage life, she is starting to gain some insight. I think that she goes on to love herself, trust herself, and eventually moves away from Zanesville, going on to write a story of her teenage years there.(less)

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Dec 31, 2011 Jody Kihara rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book was good but NOT worth the hype it's been receiving. I find it interesting that a novel with a 14 year-old protagonist and very much about friends, boys, and school, got such glowing reviews. Why is this? Well, my theory is that because this is being marketed to adults rather than teens, it's playing on the reminiscent/sentimental vibe; whereas if you gave this book to a teenager, they'd likely find it boring. Given how much YA I read, I can safely say there are SO MANY better teenage-...more

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May 21, 2011 Kate Woods Walker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Pitch-perfect evocation of adolescence, with language that is both stark and dreamy, In Zanesville paints a hurts-so-good landscape of lower middle class life and family relationships. Jo Ann Beard's young heroine displays both casual corruption and embarrassed nobility in her journey toward maturity and an uncertain future.

From the startling, smoky beginning scene to the introduction of a bowl of malted milk balls, the plot and setting zig just when you expect them to zag, and delightfully so....more

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May 18, 2011 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

1970s coming-of-age story about a 14 year old girl living in a small Midwestern town. The narrator (who shall remain nameless) has a fantastic voice. She is funny and irreverent and clever (example: she refers to someone as “a boy with the ruinous name Milton”). Her best friend Felicia, aka Flea, is also perfectly portrayed and I also thoroughly enjoyed the 1970s mom archetype our narrator is forced to live with. Ultimately, though, despite the strength of the narrator’s personality, there just...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

4.5 stars, but 5 if you go by the sheer pleasure I got from reading this masterful novel. The details are so incredibly evocative and so true to life--I've never seen adolescence rendered so well. The sense of urgency never leaves, and more importantly, it feels as legitimate to us as it does to the narrator (named Jo Ann???). The crises of young teenagers could so easily feel trivial or boring or irritating to an adult reader, but that's never the case in this book. In fact, the plot points of...more

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Jun 26, 2011 Laura Stone Johnson rated it 4 of 5 stars

“In Zanesville” is a pitch-perfect coming-of-age story that fully captures the aching agony of teen angst, focusing on the alluring pull of peer pressure among the in-crowd and loyalty to the old guard. Author Jo Ann Beard’s fourteen-year-old narrator (whose name, Jo, is only hinted at) considers herself a sidekick, a role she’s happy to play until life begins to force her and her best friend, Flea (Felicia) outside their insular cocoon. “I’d like to be the kind of person who can do something we...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Tricia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Could I please just become president of the Jo Ann Beard Fan Club and get it over with? Her voice, her wit, her dead-on ability to simultaneously evoke the best and absolute worst of adolescence: in the novel's opening lines, the main character discovers that all is not right in the house where she and her best friend are babysitting. "We can't believe the house is on fire. It's so embarrassing first of all, and so dangerous second of all."

I used to think that it was Alice McDermott who best por...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

In Zanesville starts out great but then falls apart. The story follows a 14-year-old girl (who, in a particularly twee rhetorical device, remains unnamed until late in the book) and her best friend Felicia from the summer before 9th-grade until mid-winter of the school year. There's no plot to speak of; this is a coming-of-age novel, but one that becomes less convincing as you get further into it.

In the first half or so, the narrator's perspective and observations come across as alternately chi...more

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May 28, 2011 Digna rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

A witty tale of an average American teenager in a dysfunctional family.

If you were a teen in the 1970's you can definitely relate to INZANESVILLE. The main character a 14 year old teenager girl is also the narrator and remains annonymous throughout the book. Despite her dysfunctional family which includes her chain smoking mother and her non-working alcoholic father, the narator seeems to emotionally lead a rather normal teenage life. Follow her and laugh as I did as she leads you through her...more

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About Jo Ann Beard

Jo Ann Beard is the author of a collection of autobiographical essays, The Boys of My Youth. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Essays, and other magazines and anthologies. She received a Whiting Foundation Award and nonfiction fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

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Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

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Quotes from In Zanesville

“...within the souls of the awkward and the overlooked often burns something radiant.” — 3 people liked it

“It feels weird right at this moment to not be anybody's sidekick. Hard to explain, but when I look at the moon, it seems like it's paying attention to me, instead of me paying attention to it. It's way up there now. Hi, moon, I say silently to it. Yes, I'm high, it says back. The moon has a sense of humor.” — 2 people liked it

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