Here is our lovely Miss Cleary! We probably know a lot about her. If you don't know anything about her, read A GIRL FROM YAMHILL and/or MY OWN TWO FEET. She passed away this year at the age of 104. If one of the other Cleary-book group read leaders wants to give a snapshot of her, they can. Or you can read her wikipedia page.
"I don't consider myself an artist," Krush tells me. "I'm an illustrator. Most artists, if they're painting something and you don't understand it," that's your problem. "If I illustrate something and you don't understand it, I failed."
I think the illustrations in FIFTEEN are just adorable! They do add so much to the story [which is delightful in its own right.] The Krush's papers are divided between the University of Southern Mississippi and the Kerlan Collection at the U - home of some of Maud's papers! They're definitely BT adjacent.
Another interesting tidbit - Joe Krush was a courtroom sketch artist at the Nuremberg trials. The Krushes were married during WWII so I wonder what Beth was up to at the time. If you are curious you can see this interview with Joe which I have not yet watched, but plan to someday!
Since I love links, here are a few that give an idea of how other people percieve this book. FANCY links!
From SLATE we have "Stories for the Square Girls", from THE PARIS REVIEW we have Sadie Stein's love letter to FIFTEEN, and CARLY'S MALT SHOP (which I adore for her Janet Lambert reviews) has a lovely overview. There is also an entire homemade site dedicated to the book and I am trying to find out the circumstances under which it was created. I'll let you know what I find out. For now, it is unattributed, but rich with information!
Here is the schedule I am hoping to keep for the remainder of the group read. We shall see how well I hold to it.
MONDAY, AUGUST 23 - 1&2
THURSDAY, AUGUST 26 - 3&4
SATURDAY, AUGUST 28 - 5&6
MONDAY, AUGUST 30 - 7&8
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 - 9-11
And now, join me as we look at the book that taught me about horse meat, Chinatown, fog, disappointment and not settling for any partner who wasn't nice! I will be posting my stream of consciousness from my most recent re-read and putting some questions at the end. No pressure to answer the questions, I have been TERRIBLE this group read about taking part - many travels, many travails - but I have loved the posts and responses as an observer. Also, I believe roll call is starting soon, so make sure you mark your subject heading so that those who don't want to read about FIFTEEN can avoid it, and live their misguided, Stan-Crandell-free lives.
(Just kidding! Opinions are opinions and we are all entitled to them! But if you don't root for Jane, your opinion is horrible...)
CHAPTER 1 - "HELLO THERE" AND A BOY
When we meet Jane, she is visioning a boy. She's counting convertibles and stepping on cracks. She has the perfect boy in mind. I wonder if he will show up. Then we are introduced to Marcy who is the worst. "Hello there!" she says. Ick. Jane compares herself to Marcy unfavorably - there is a metaphor involving cashmere sweaters that I don't get, not owning any myself.
Jane considers the only boy she has dated - George - who carries money in a change purse. Oh, George, honey, no... He is not enough to get her into the gossip column in the school paper. It seems a horrible idea to have a gossip column in the school paper.
So we are post-war and Levittowns are springing up. Jane considers the two new neighborhoods in Woodmont. First there are the Bayaire Estates offering "no down payment to veterans." But Jane isn't headed there today. Today she is going to babysit in one of the "California modern, architect-designed, planned for outdoor living" houses. The Nortons are FANCY.
Neither Jane nor her best friend Julie like babysitting for the Nortons. Sandra is a holy terror. But they pay and someday when those girls need money they will take anything they can get. Mrs. Norton is a "Hello there" girl all grown up. Her house is antiseptic and her family smokes a lot. Probably not Sandra, but you never know.
So Sandra, demon that she is, lets Cuthbert the dog out and Jane has to go under a bush to get him out as Marcy and Greg go by seeing the whole thing. Humiliating! Sandra is starved for power and forces Jane to speak French. Fortunately, Jane is a good student who remembers much of her French. But then she can't remember how to say "bottle of blue ink" and Sandra threatens to spill it on the rug. (And she looks completely demented in the picture. I had never noticed before because the boy looks so dreamy!)
Luckily a very nice, strange boy comes in and through the power or pig-Latin is able to save the carpet. Sandra falls asleep and Jane is able to relax. And daydream about this boy!
Babysitting horror stories? Let 'em rip!
The Dansiks were three boys I baby sat for (6, 8 & 10) every Saturday. The parents owned a deli and the mom had no time for housecleaning so I would do a little cleaning while the demon-children played in the yard. One day they buried the garden hose, nozzle down and filled in the hole and made the walls of the hole collapse in, trapping the hose. It didn't seem a big deal, but Mrs. Dansik lost her mind. She had never thanked me for the housework anyway, or for keeping her spawn alive despite their predilection for bad decisions. So when I was fired, I was not disappointed. Although I missed the sandwichs. I got my job at the public library as a children's room page the next month and the rest is history.
Meet-cute stories? I want to hear them!
I worked in a bookstore my freshman year of college. I went home for the summer, but got my job back the next fall. When I came in for my first shift, there was a very cute boy in stone-washed jeans and a magnificent mullet working behind the counter. Reader, I married him.
CHAPTER 2 - THE PURDY'S TELEPHONE RINGS
It is completely adorable how Jane hints around to get the Doggie Diner truck to swing by the house. Sadly, Sir Puss, the family cat, puts the kibosh on it. In Jane's opinion the only qualification a Purdy dog needed was "a good appetite." HA!
Jane talks to her best friend Julie on the phone and is cagey about meeting a boy. At first I thought she was a bad friend, but then I realized she just didn't want her parents to hear and start asking incessant questions the way parents do. She overhears her mother refer to her as "a sweet, sensible girl" and wants to hurl.
AND THEN STAN CRANDALL CALLS!!!!
AND HE WANTS A DATE!!!!!!!!
The details of the call are adorable. You can revisit pages 44-46 to watch the magic happen.
After Jane accepts, she needs to get her parent's permission and it is not going to be easy. Mr. Purdy catches on right away - "Aha! Horse meat! The plot thickens!"The whole Doggie Diner thing is ripe for comedy. When Mrs. Purdy begins laughing at "horse meat" Jane nearly busts into tears and wails, "It's U.S. government inspected horse meat!" I don't think of this book as being funny, necessarily, but boy, Cleary is excellent at adding those details.
Mrs. Purdy is clearly on team George and says he is going to grow up nicely. But Jane wants a boy who is fun NOW! The Purdy's figure out why George is possibly a social liability and thaw and finally acquiesce. Jane is immediately thrown into a fantasy of going with Stan. If I've learned one thing from Jane Lambert, it is that going steady was only for fast girls! Is Jane fast??
Julie is awesome, frankly I am more a Julie than a Jane in real life - see girdle struggles in chapter 5 for details. The whole family being able to hear you on the phone issue is an irritation that today's kids will never know. Who was your ride-or-die in high school?
[Sad story, I didn't have one! I went to three different high schools and while I usually had a nice group of music nerds to hang out with, there was no Anne Marie Walton - my elementary school best friend from whom we heartlessly moved away. I have several now, so it all turned out okay. And it makes me extra-kind to the kids in the library at the high school who sneak their lunch in so that they don't have to eat alone.]
GOING STEADY??? How were your parents about dating? Was there an age set? Did they have to meet the person first?
[My older sister was wild and I had no game, so it wasn't a big deal. Although my mother did warn me against "petting" which is the one word that I can't abide to this day. The less said about that, the better.]
And that's it for the first two chapters! I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I did. I can't WAIT to hear how Jane's date goes. Julie and I will just be sitting here eating iceberg lettuce and dreaming about fries until she gets back to spill the tea.
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