Grosse Pointe Girl: Tales from a Suburban Adolescence - Softcover

McCandless, Sarah Grace Grace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743256123 ISBN 13: 9780743256124

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2004

Synopsis

Welcome to Grosse Pointe, Michigan, where social rank is determined by the age of your money and the dryness of your martini.
The new girl in town, Emma Harris, must prove herself hip to the rigid rules of adolescent conformity. The quest for cool, she discovers, is one long final exam. To pass she must be cruel to be kind (ditching her best friend for the popular crowd), dress to impress (trading her favorite Esprit shirt for three plastic bracelets), and master the art of seduction (puckering up with Mulberry Stain or Peaches 'n' Cream lip gloss). Life is all about making choices -- the right ones.
Will Emma's social acrobatics put her on the short list for that coveted country club membership? Will the digits of her zip code pass muster? If her parents split up, will the gossip help or hurt her in the rankings? Grosse Pointe Girl serves as an indispensable road map through the dysfunction privilege brings. So put on your Guess? jeans and your jelly shoes and come along for the ride to the adolescent days that time forgot, but you never will.

About this title

About the Author:

Sarah Grace McCandless is the author of Grosse Pointe Girl. She lives in Washington, D.C. Visit her on the web at www.sarahdisgrace.com.

From Booklist:

Set in a wealthy suburb, where yards are "as green as the plastic grass from an Easter basket," McCandless' first novel is a hilarious, spot-on survey of the humiliations and perilous victories of a privileged adolescence. The story follows Emma Harris from her arrival in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, at 13 years of age through high-school graduation. Emma's first-person voice is an utterly convincing blend of self-absorption, detachment, and obsession over intricate social rules; her parent's divorce, for example, is almost a footnote in a chapter about Emma's plot to join the school ski club and win over a guy. Readers who were teens in the 1980s will recognize the cultural references, from the characters' Guess jeans to their Cure cassette tapes. Drawings from comics illustrator Christine Norrie capture the era, although the Archie-style is sometimes at odds with the tone of the words. But McCandless' wickedly funny descriptions and her unerring ear for teen dialogue will appeal to any reader who remembers, or is surviving, the stomach-twisting anxiety of becoming an adult. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0743256123
• ISBN 13: 9780743256124
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192