Mary Jane: A Novel
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""The best book of the summer."" -- InStyle
""I LOVED this novel....If you have ever sung along to a hit on the radio, in any decade, then you will devour Mary Jane at 45 rpm.""Â âNick Hornby
Almost Famous meets Daisy Jones & The Six in this ""delightful"" (New York Times Book Review) novel about a fourteen-year-old girlâs coming of age in 1970s Baltimore, caught between her straight-laced family and the progressive family she nannies forâwho happen to be secretly hiding a famous rock star and his movie star wife for the summer.
In 1970s Baltimore, fourteen-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her familyâs subscription to the Broadway Showtunes of the Month record club. Shy, quiet, and bookish, sheâs glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Janeâs mother says. In a respectable house.
The house may look respectable on the outside, but inside itâs a literal and figurative mess: clutter on every surface, Impeachment: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers on the doors, cereal and takeout for dinner. And even more troublesome (were Mary Janeâs mother to know, which she does not): the doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important jobâhelping a famous rock star dry out. A week after Mary Jane starts, the rock star and his movie star wife move in.
Over the course of the summer, Mary Jane introduces her new household to crisply ironed clothes and a family dinner schedule, and has a front-row seat to a liberal world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (not to mention group therapy). Caught between the lifestyle sheâs always known and the future sheâs only just realized is possible, Mary Jane will arrive at September with a new idea about what she wants out of life, and what kind of person sheâs going to be.Â
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Jessica Anya Blau was born in Boston and raised in Southern California. Her novels have been featured on The TODAY Show, Good Morning America, CNN, and NPR, and in Cosmo, Vanity Fair, Bust, Time Out, Oprah Summer Reads and other national publications. Jessicaâs short stories and essays have been published in numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies. Jessica co-wrote the script for Love on the Run starring Frances Fisher and Steve Howey. She sometimes works as a ghost writer and has taught writing at Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College, and The Fashion Institute of Technology. Jessica lives in New York.
