THE PRECIOUS DAYS by Janet Lambert

 

Hey, it's a new family - the Campbells! And they are weird. Seriously weird for Janet. The Dad is a former professor, an intellectual who should be writing, but is not. The mom is an artist who also lives in her head. They roam the sea on a refurbed Chinese junk and have been in all kinds of exoric ports, but are currently in, I believe, New Jersey.

The eldest of the three kids are Sandra who is sixteen and believes that everyone is constantly judging her. She is kind of a pill, but frankly, she is doing most of the parenting on that boat and I get why she is so pissed all the time. Her parents are completely clueless about what it is like to be a teenager, particularly at a time when conformity is so important. And also, she is stunningly beautiful.

Josie is the middle child, so of course she is awesome. She is a young 14 in many ways, but she is also an excellent problem-solver and the best wing-man a big sister could have.  There is a younger brother - Tenny - who is probably 11-ish and extremely well adjusted, as Lambertian younger brothers usually are, Bobby Parrish notwithstanding.  

The kids' names are actually Cassandra, Josephine and Tennyson, which I am sure seemed strange at the time, but are now (with the possible exception of Tennyson) pretty run of the mill now. 

So they live on a boat and the girls are hanging out on the dock and see some townies. Sandra acts all weird and speaks a foreign language and gets angry to be noticed. It is fascinating because she feels like she is being looked down on, when in reality everyone can see she is fascinating. Janet does a wonderful job of painting that teenage-navel-gazing thing where they just know that everyone is staring at them and they feel so exposed. She also gives a look at economic disparity that is fairly realistic. It's all well educated white folks, but still.

The story is a delight. This boy - Jay Stagliano (an Italian-American - so exotic!) gets an eyeful of Sandra and decides to rush her. She, somewhat awkwardly, pretends to be a woman of mystery and it frees her up to enjoy herself. She is eventually revealed to be who she is, but Jay is not put off. He actually finds her even more fascinating! The rest of the book is a mix of Sandra giving in to the social pull of belonging and allowing herself to have fun and the family as a whole recognizing that some changes need to be made as the kids get older. Josie and Tenny, who are a little young to feel the sting of "different-ness" as much as Sandra, are pulled into the fun and her parents eventually recognize that they have been dropping the ball parenting-wise. 

The Campbells do end up hitting the road (or more precisely, the sea) at the end of the book, but there is more structure, and more money, in their future. Jay doesn't declare his love to Sandra at the end of the book - Lambert's boys NEVER declare love at first book - but he lets us readers into his heart and shows that it only beats for her. And luckily, he is wealthy, so he plans to go visit the Campbells wherever they end up. (I am currently reading FOR EACH OTHER, and he shows up in Haiti.) All in all, a satisfactory conclusion.