Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau  – Audio

Book Blurb:

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau: In 1970s Baltimore, fourteen-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her family’s subscription to the Broadway Showtunes of the Month record club. Shy, quiet, and bookish, she’s glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Jane’s mother says. In a respectable house.
The house may look respectable on the outside, but inside it’s 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 Jane’s mother to know, which she does not): the doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important job–helping 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 she’s always known and the future she’s 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 she’s going to be. 

My Review: 4.5 stars

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Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau was an absolute joy to listen to with a protagonist that I just loved the heck out of. This book explores how one summer job as a mother’s helper literally changed and opened the mind of a sheltered and naive fourteen-year-old girl, while simultaneously altering the family and friends of those she encounters.  

In a blink of an eye, Mary Jane became a liar as her parents would’ve split their pants had they known that Mary Jane was spending every day with not just Izzy, her precocious five-year-old charge, but also with a Jewish father, a hippy mother, and two of the biggest music stars in the country. As much as Mary Jane learned about sex, drugs and rock and roll, the other characters grew from Mary Jane’s watch over all of them. She cooked, cleaned and basically ran the household of these unique, relatable and troubled characters.  

Each of the characters continually surprised one another which was endearing and thought provoking. Jimmy was one of my favorite characters; he was so wonderfully conjured in my mind’s eye. I also adored Izzy, whose voice was perfectly nuanced for a five-year-old. 

Overall, this is a coming-of-age story that feels hopeful and promising. Over that summer, Mary Jane learned to become an independent thinker and that love comes in many forms, even love for the dishes. I highly recommend this joyful and well-written book.

Quotes I liked:

I hadn’t understood that people you loved could do things you didn’t love. And, still, you could keep loving them.”

“It had never before occurred to me that sometimes dishes weren’t just dishes, that things could represent ideas in more powerful ways than the ideas themselves.”

“To feel something was to feel alive. And to feel alive was starting to feel like love.”

“Mary Jane. We can’t let that painting be fiction!”