MARY JANE

An adolescent girl comes of age in this nostalgic novel of 1970s Baltimore.

In the summer of 1975, nothing has stopped earnest 14-year-old Mary Jane Dillard from loyally accepting her strict Presbyterian mother’s beliefs about what it means to be a well-behaved young woman. Her familiar world turns upside down, however, when she begins nannying for the Cones, an unconventional family made up of Dr. Cone, a psychiatrist, Mrs. Cone, a housewife who—scandalously—doesn’t cook or clean, and Izzy, their winsome daughter. Mary Jane quickly becomes an integral component of the Cone household, not only taking care of Izzy, but also cooking and cleaning for the family. When Dr. Cone welcomes two top-secret guests—a rock star recovering from drug addiction and his movie-star wife—to the household, Mary Jane finds herself getting an unexpected but thrilling crash course in music, fame, sex, and the adult world…one that she’s inevitably forced to hide from her conservative parents. Blau paints an overly rosy picture of Mary Jane’s coming-of-age: Though the book nominally engages with weighty topics including addiction, adultery, and racism, it fails to seriously reckon with them or with the complex and often ugly history of America in the 1970s. The novel’s countercultural setting is, regrettably, mere window dressing. Though Mary Jane’s desire to escape her parents’ oppressive home is understandable, Blau never critically interrogates the Cones’ extreme openness, particularly about sex, which is also inappropriate given the fact that Mary Jane is only 14. With the exception of some clunky dialogue, Blau’s novel is readable and modestly entertaining, and readers nostalgic for the rock-and-roll scene of the '70s will likely enjoy its depiction of a wayward star, but it never dares to ask difficult questions.

A frustratingly sentimental depiction of adolescence and American counterculture.