MARY'S STAR by Wilma Pitchford Hays
[1968]
E.L. Konigsburg has been in the news
recently. Her most famous work FROM THE MIXED UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL
E FRANKWEILER just had maybe it's 40th anniversary and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (where it is mostly set) was featuring it.
That book is freaking brilliant. As a kid I was also obsessed with
JENNIFER, HECATE, MACBETH, WILLIAM MCKINLY AND ME, ELIZABETH which I
recently tried to reread and found too stressful. This woman can
choose titles, that is for sure!
JTA800N surprised me with it's
weirdness and appeal. Once again, there is a kid who I would want to
slap about the head and neck if he were real, and yet, his curiosity
and obstinance are strangely appealing on the page. Basically, Max's
mom is getting married to a rich guy who can keep her (and Max) in
the style to which she is very interested in becoming accustomed. So
Max is to spend the summer with his father who is a camel keeper.
The camel, Ahmad, is kind of the
MacGuffin of the story. Woody, Max's dad, travels around bringing
Ahmad to events like the state fair, a convention of travel agents
and eventually a Vegas show featuring Max's mom's friend from her
hippie days, Trina Rose - who I can't help picturing as Cass Elliot.
Max meets Sabrina, a fascinating girl
about his age, and her mother Lilly, a chameleon whose job leads to
the meaning of the title. Sabrina collects stories about freaks and
Lilly, well, it is too good a twist – I am going to recommend you
read this weird little book.
There is a bit of a language problem –
the word “retarded” is used pejoratively and there is even a
pretty crude joke about Downs Syndrome – both by Max. But in the
context of him being kind of an asshole, a bright kid is not going to
think, “Hey, despite what is told to me by every decent person, I
guess it IS okay to talk like this!”
The secondary characters, hell, ALL the
characters are kind of fascinating. The world is bizarre but
realistic and I love Trina Rose so much, I want to be her. I was
continually taken by surprise throughout as Max learns about the rich
lives of people to whom he feels a bit superior and about his own
origins. The title seems a stretch and the cover art is just
horrible, but the book was a pleasure to read from cover.
MARY'S STAR is pretty conventional
historical fiction from the 60s. There is a girl, a distant older
brother, an orphaning (is that what you call it when you become an
orphan?), some nice neighbors, a horrible nouveau riche landowner, a
scrawny yet appealing apprentice, some happy negro servants
(wouldn't want to be unpleasant and call them slaves, or enslaved
people), a Revolutionary War, and, of course, a horse.
Honestly, that pretty much sums it up.
There is NOTHING happening in this book that you don't see coming a
mile and a half away. Ooh, Mary wears pants sometimes. Because she is
a bit of a tomboy. But don't worry! At the end she realizes that
being a girl is okay because if you look pretty, people will do
things for you. And check out the sequal MARY'S STARLIGHT LOUNGE
where she finds out that that can lead to an orphan girl working the
pole. Okay, that is a lie. But it saddened me that in an otherwise
slightly dull tale of a girl with a bit of gumption, the denouement
is basically she gussies herself up and things take care of
themselves. Perhaps I'm jaded. Mary still talks of adventures and
still rides astride, but it is 1781 and I know that it is going to be
a good 200+ years before Mary would be allowed to be herself and just
enjoy being who she is without worrying about conforming to gender
roles.
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