Mary Jane: A Novel

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This is one of my favorite novels this year! I thank GR friend Holly for her terrific review which brought this to my radar. What a delight it was to be engrossed in the summer of 1975 with the sweet and endearing Mary Jane. Mary Jane’s life is thrown for a loop when one of Dr. Cone’s patients and his wife move in, so Dr. Cone can help him beat his addiction. But it’s not just any patient—it’s Jimmy, a famous musician, and his even-more-famous wife, Sheba. Suddenly Mary Jane is the only person paying attention to what goes on with Izzy, ensuring whether there’s food in the house, getting the laundry done, etc. And at the same time, she starts to learn things about life, love, relationships, and music, things that conflict with the things she’s always believed. It’s good when your eyes are opened to what’s around you, but difficult at the same time. She gets a summer job with a nearby family, caring for Izzy. She encounters a family very different from her own. The mom, Bonnie, rarely cooks or cleans the house. The dad is a psychiatrist and has one exclusive client for the summer. Izzy is a sweet 5-year-old girl who loves to help Mary Jane with cooking, cleaning the house, ironing, and grocery shopping. The atmosphere at their house is one of love and affection, quite different than Mary Jane’s respectable stand-offish parents! What makes this adorable is Mary Jane trying to process the differences in households. She was taught one way, and the way that the Cones are living are totally unacceptable; except Mary Jane sees the loving part, the functioning part. On one of the last weeks of summer, everyone, including Mary Jane go to a beach house. So many fun and happy days and nights!!

Mary Jane is about the titular Mary Jane, but it’s also a tale of two families: the Dillards and Cones. However, the bulk of the story is centered on the mess that is the Cone family, with the Dillards an afterthought, as if Blau found them too boring to even think about. Unfortunately for the story, without any vivid sense of the Dillard parents, it’s even harder to understand, much less appreciate, why the Cones hold so much appeal for Mary Jane. But ultimately, for these families to be contrasted in any meaningful way, they’d have to be nuanced, and all the characters, even narrator Mary Jane, are flat as boards. Here in lies the fun of the novel, seeing this new lifestyle through the eyes of Mary Jane. It’s a coming-of-age story in that at the age of fourteen, Mary Jane is understanding that there are different ways of living. Gemmill, Allie (May 3, 2017). " 'Spider-Man' Love Interest Mary Jane Watson Deserved So Much More". Bustle. Archived from the original on July 15, 2019 . Retrieved August 24, 2020. Let me start with what Mary Jane is not. Despite the bold publisher blurb, it IS NOT “Almost Famous” meets Daisy Jones and the Six. At least they get the next bit right when they call it a “funny, wise, and tender novel about a fourteen-year-old girl’s coming of age in 1970s Baltimore.”This young woman was such a pleasure and her character, along with little Izzy, is what makes this story work.

However, elements of her character were met with a mixed response. In his review of Spider-Man 3, Ryan Gilbey of the NewStatesman was critical of Dunst's character: "the film-makers couldn't come up with much for Mary Jane to do other than scream a lot". [23] Allie Gemmill of Bustle wrote in 2017 that the films portray Mary Jane as a constant damsel in distress and gave the illusion that she was defined primarily through the men in her life. [24] Conversely, Adadora Asidianya wrote that Mary Jane provides a voice of reason for Peter, whether as a friend or a love interest. [17] I couldn’t find the magic in this story about an adolescent who one summer works a babysitting gig for a free-spirited family. The protagonist and narrator is Mary Jane Dillard, a naïve but mature and capable fourteen-year-old, and the child of two bland parents who live their lives in traditional gender roles. The Dillards have all the trappings of a rich, white family: They belong to a country club, live in an elegant house in a posh neighborhood, and send their daughter to a pricy private school. Their concerns never extend beyond the comfortingly banal: cooking, gardening, church-going. Mary Jane’s parents are offensive to her because her life with them is boring and rigid. The stage is set for her to put the Cones, a family totally unlike her own, on a pedestal. Daly, Steve (April 17, 2007). "World Wide Web". Entertainment Weekly. p.3. Archived from the original on April 22, 2007 . Retrieved April 20, 2007. The only thing Mary Jane has going for it is Mary Jane herself. She’s a likable narrator who tells the story in an easygoing, conversational voice that kept my attention to the very end. For this reason, as a reading experience, Mary Jane is good--Blau’s personable writing style is exactly the kind I gravitate toward--but as a story experience, it’s exasperating. The bones of a stand-out story are here but only the bones. Mary Jane is both too undeveloped and too problematic to be called complete, and it’s way too annoying to be the joyful story Blau was intending. It’s 1970s Baltimore. Mary Jane is a good girl—she loves Broadway show tunes, sings in the church choir, and grows up in a conservative, traditional household. (There’s even a picture of President Ford hanging in the house.) Her father works; her mother takes care of the house and makes sure dinner is always on time.The fun starts when Dr. Cone takes on a famous patient that he needs to treat for drug addiction and sex addiction. Mary Jane knows her parents would not allow her to work in a home were a drug addict (oh no!) and a sex addict is being treated. Gilbey, Ryan (May 7, 2007). "Take a crawl on the dark side". The New Statesman. Archived from the original on November 28, 2017 . Retrieved May 7, 2020. This was such a fun one that put a smile on my face! I would put this one firmly in the “coming-of-age” camp even though our main character is just 14. I loved Mary Jane’s character, she sings in the church choir, loves show tunes, cooking, and gardening with her mom. It’s the early 1970s in Baltimore.