Innocence [Paperback]

Jane Mendelsohn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2001

In her electrifying follow-up to the acclaimed bestseller, I Was Amelia Earhart, Jane Mendelsohn delivers a modern gothic coming-of-age story, a devastating X-ray of American culture, and a piercing, playful, and poetic exploration of the inner life of a teenage girl growing up in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Beckett is transplanted to an upscale school in Manhattan after the death of her mother, she is not surprised to be snubbed by the in-crowd. What does surprise her, and her loving father, is that when she looks out her apartment window one night, the three most popular girls in school are dead on the asphalt below, their blue jeans seeping blood. Beckett is already prone to Holden Caulfield-like observations about the fakeness around her, the propensity of the people she meets to become only "movie stars" acting their parts. Are the suicides imaginary? And what about her new friend, Pamela, the school nurse, who begins to date her father? Is this woman's concern purely affectionate or does Beckett, a beautiful young virgin, have something that she wants?

Following the quiet wedding of Pamela and Beckett's father, held in the apartment, Beckett opens her bathroom door to find the toilet full of blood. At once she recognizes the blood as "a sacred symbol, a message, a warning, a sign." In fear, she imagines it spilling over the bowl, splashing her hands and face. "Then the fear dies down," Beckett explains, "and I see that the blood is just a liquid, nothing but a surprise. But as the loud, throaty sound of the flush fills my head and I turn off the light, I know that the blood means something. I know that the blood is not just a surprise. I know that it is meant for me." Using Carol Clover's concept of the final girl--the one who survives by learning to kill--in slasher films, Jane Mendelsohn (I Was Amelia Earhart) offers a brilliant and sinister vision of a schoolgirl's loss of innocence. As for the virgin suicides, the bats, the bloody bundles in the freezer, the reader comes to realize, with Beckett, that it doesn't matter what is real, only what is true. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Adolescence is a tough time for most people, and it is especially hard for 14-year-old Beckett, whose mother was killed in a drunk-driving accident in the suburbs. After the accident, her father, Miles, decides to move to an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, enrolling Beckett in an exclusive private school. Strange things are happening at this schoolDseveral girls have formed suicide pacts, and three girls kill themselves shortly after Beckett begins school. It is through these events that Beckett meets Pam, the school nurse, who begins dating Miles and eventually becomes Beckett's new stepmother. Part modern Gothic, the novel flows along in a stream-of-consciousness narrative that reveals Beckett's inner turmoil. We also learn that all is not as it seems with Pam and the strange events at school. The book offers an interesting spin on the traditional coming-of-age story as it keeps the reader wondering, Is this fantasy or is this reality? Suitable for adults, this second novel by the author of I Was Amelia Earhart might also appeal to a mature young adult reader. Recommended for public libraries.
-DRobin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (May 8, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573228745
• ISBN-13: 978-1573228749
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,300,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Have we forgotten how to read? Allegorical brilliance!, September 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Innocence (Hardcover)

As a fan of the author's first, widely (mis-)read book, I was so looking forward to her next effort, hoping she would take her lyrical imagination and gifts for lucid prose to new heights. I have never been more shocked. Rather than soaring even higher than Amelia, this book plumbs a kind of literary depth that you won't often find outside Dante. If Amelia was a dream, this one's a nightmare. If Stephen King and Virginia Woolf mated, the result would be this wild, wonderful, brilliant book.

I admit, I was put off by some of the negative reviews (oh me of little faith) that the back-biting, presumably jealous journalism types have doled out to this dark little gem, but what gets me is that no one seems to be reading the book on its own terms - as allegory - as fable - as metaphor. Beckett herself (the narrator, a wonderful, sassy, smart girl, and how glad I am that my own girls will grow up with such a heroine, as I did with Holden Caulfield) tells us, again and again - it doesn't matter if something is real. What matters is if it's true. Well this book is like a brace of cold truth on all of our faces - about youth, about the culture, about the country - and it's also as entertaining as can be. Bravo, Mendelsohn! You've done it again....and once again, the people seem to be missing it (although I've actually read quite a few great reviews around the country on line - maybe the New Yorkers are simply too jealous of your first book's success to know how to read this book for the allegory it is - but that doesn't excuse my fellow Amazonians, who usually read with such distinction....)

Before writing this, I went back and reread my own review of I Was Amelia Earhart, and everything I said there is even truer of Inocence: Mendelsohn's writing remains positively entrancing, "a compelling hybrid of Hemingway, Garcia Marquez, and Virgina Woolf." And as with Amelia, I'm suprised by how few "picked up on the book's exquisite irony, its dry wit, its utterly deadpan sense of humor." My final comment may need some amending: I wrote that "I have a feeling that her next book will more clearly establish Mendelsohn for what she is -- the writer of her generation." Well, Innocence definitely confirms that in my mind, but if the reviewers, professional and otherwise, continue their campaign of idiocy, we may have to wait for her next book for the rest of the country to catch up with the plain unvarnished truth: she's the best we have, a heavyweight like very few others writing today.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this with your heart, not your mind!, April 10, 2004

By 

North Carolina Reader (Burlington, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Innocence (Paperback)

I began reading "Innocence" and after the first 30 pages or so, I was trying to reconcile in my mind whether or not the storyline was a dream. So....I started over and began reading this book again, WITHOUT my intellectual predilection to examine and "prove" every detail in a novel. That's the whole point of this novel, as "Beckett" the main character herself mentions several times, that her view is not believed by those around her. She is a teenager who has recently lost her mother in an accident and is facing womanhood, moving to a new school, where she doesn't fit in, dealing with her father's new romance with the school nurse. The actual events of the novel, while I never had a strong feel for whether or not they were real, as Beckett says, were "true." I think that this novel is as another reviewer said, mostly allegorical, and that the entire point is to look through the eyes of Beckett, as she struggles to process momentous changes in her life. After I read the book [in one sitting, by the way] and closed the cover, my thoughts were just as Beckett said...It doesn't matter if it was real, it was true... This book is not for everyone, I will concede that point. It is filled with so much imagery and the fantastical thoughts of a teenage girl in turmoil that it is impossible to tell which parts are truly supposed to be real. But after reading it, well, it doesn't really matter. I was entertained, and concerned, because I agree that there is great disolutionment in our youth. This book points that out so well.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative and captivating, March 13, 2002

By 

Bri Meets Books (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Innocence (Paperback)

Little Willow recommended this book to me..Oh, and in simple words, it is FABULOUS. Mendelson uses analogies to omnipotent Final Girl of horror fame, and Alice in Wonderland to convey a dark and deep feeling, so that the reader really is with Beckett. The words employed by Jane bring vivid pictures, making you want to devour it within seconds. A delicious coming of age with a unique twist, this no ordinary tale.