Mary Jane
Book: Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau
Synopsis:
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.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5/5
My Thoughts: On one hand, this book was like Daisy Jones & The Six through the eyes of a fan. On the other hand, this book was so much more than Daisy Jones or anything in that universe. By putting the story in the hands of a 14-year-old, the book becomes about growing beyond the world presented by your parents and even turning around and teaching them a thing or two.
Mary Jane was essentially the same age as my mom, so some of the world built in the book felt familiar to me. It meant I could easily place familiar people into the world of the book and better picture the reality instead of simply conjuring up images in the style of That ’70s Show. It also meant I wasn’t surprised when Mary Jane’s parents were outright vocally antisemitic (and racist and bigoted in countless other ways).
Two days ago this book was a really good, really sweet coming of age story. But today, as I sit here with Roe v. Wade in the headlines, I see even clearer how the book offers a glimpse at how far society has come, how far we can go, and how far we can backslide. I see how so many people still today believe women should be home cooking, cleaning, raising children, and running a household and if we dare not to aspire to that specific role or if we don’t excel at any of those tasks then we deserve ridicule. I see how many parents still today think they should determine how their children express themselves, be it in the clothing they wear or the songs they listen to or the TV they watch. I see how, 47 years later, the outdated views of Mary Jane’s parents are still far too rampant but Gerald Ford isn’t the president whose portrait is hanging on the wall and now home décor is in beiges and pastels instead of browns and yellows.
(Obviously, I’m well-aware of the bigotry that’s been present in this country since before its founding so it’s not like this book opened my eyes to a new level of awfulness or anything — it’s that the current events as I write this review seem to have so many parallels to the state of the world in the book that I now couldn’t possibly talk about the book without mentioning those parallels.)
Even before the parallels between the book and current events became glaringly apparent I would’ve recommended this book to anybody who asked. I loved getting swept up in Mary Jane’s life-changing summer full of new people, experiences, and music. I loved seeing the world through such curious, well-meaning, open-minded eyes.
If you want to get to know Mary Jane yourself then you can buy your own copy here or borrow the book from your local library.
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