In Zanesville

 “We can’t believe the house is on fire. It’s so embarrassing first of all, and so dangerous second of all. Also, we’re supposed to be in charge”

In Zanesville (2011) is a wryly written coming-of-age story. A young girl who remains nameless throughout the novel negotiates the pitfalls of early adolescence in Zanesville, Illinois,  “the farm implement capital of the world”, in the 70s. Joanne Beard captures all her awkwardness in painful detail. The book opens with a scene of a babysitting job going terribly wrong. She and her bestie, Felicia (aka Flea), have been charged with the care and corralling of the six wild Kozak kids and their various pets for the summer. One of the kids sets the house on fire and all hell breaks loose. 

The two girls return to ninth grade at the end of the summer. They have been in band since the early grades. While marching in the annual Zanesville parade they come to a sudden realization that band is weird and if they march in the parade, they will be in it forever. They make a break for it mid-parade.

A new cheerleader, not realizing that the two friends are not part of the in crowd, invites them to a ‘cool girls party’. There are boys there and the narrator feels even more awkward than usual, especially after Felicia gets paired up and she doesn’t. 

Beard nails what it was like to move from childhood to adolescence in the days before cell phones. She wrote this book as a YA novel but adult women will be drawn back to the days when life was centred around wearing the right clothes, getting their first period, discovering boys, dealing with pesky and/or dysfunctional families and, above all, fitting in. I loved it.