Customer Reviews

The Miss America Family

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I love the quirky original characters Julianna Baggott creates. There's Pixie, a former Miss New Jersey who is now a dentist's wife. And there's Ezra, her 16-year-old web-toed son from her first marriage. Both have a keen eye for sharp observation, and view their world through a darkly comedic prism that cuts to the quick. I found myself chuckling as well as cringing as the images the author creates come fast and hard, creating a roller coaster of emotions in a seemingly simple but emotionally complex story that leaves little breathing space.

This is a coming-of-age story for both mother and son. She has to confront the demons of her past; he has to come to terms with his gay father and the act of violence that his mother perpetrates against her new husband. Her memories haunt her; his are the basis for his new awakenings. As the book goes on, we learn more and more about the family and Pixie's mother, whose eccentricities are forgiven when her own past secret act of courage is unearthed. All this is set in the wasteland of suburbia, and every detail of description is unique, offbeat and fresh.

I totally enjoyed this book and the probing insights that go way beneath the surface. Ms. Baggott has a gift of using humor and pathos with brutal honesty. It makes for good reading.

I found myself comparing this novel to the works of two of my favorite authors. The book is very well written and the scenes and situations that Ms. Baggott shows us could have been introduced to us by John Irving or Joseph Heller. The story itself, reminded me of the conflicted facade of Norman Rockwell's paintings. In his art, he gives us scenes from Main Street USA, that are no longer representitive our country today.

To do this Ms. Baggott presents us a dysfunctional woman named Pixie Kitchey, from a sad/tragic upbringing, trying to win her way, (in beauty pagents), toward the great American or shall I say, The Miss America Family. Pixie's goal is to build an all-american life and all-american family. A family with perfect smiles, perfect picket fences and perfect names. One-hundred percent white bread normal in contrast to her own upbringing. Of course, events happen, and the realization that you can't change people has to occur in Pixie's mind in order for her to come to the conclusion of what normalcy truly is.

The story is told from two points of view. One is from the perspective of the ex-beauty queen (Pixie) and the other is from the perspective of her awkward teenage son. Ms. Baggott is able to successfully speak in the son's voice and the reader is treated to her version of Boy Talk. The son, Ezra, gets to experience the great american crush/rejection that all boys go through. First love, first sexual experience and first separation from love is the most difficult. Ezra also gives the reader a nice perspective from the outside, looking into his mother's life.

Why is Miss America Family better than Girl Talk? I loved Girl Talk....I gave it four stars here at Amazon. I found myself liking Miss America Family even more. The plot successfully twists and turns, keeping the reading interested in both narratives as well as all story lines. I am not a fan of the quirky character or quirky tale which authors often use to spice a book up. In this novel the characters are quirky, but REAL, and the situations within are believably interesting and far-out, often sad and hysterical. I totally enjoyed this book.

I picked this book up at work... and started reading, and it just drew me in... it was a little slow from time to time, but it was so deep, and moving, and i really enjoyed it, and the people in it. It was sad, and moving, and touching, and funny. I reccommend it...

I was attracted to this book by its cover - it reminded me of a family photo - And I am soooo grateful I followed my intuitive call because this book did not once disappoint me!

"The Miss America Family" is about a family - and more sincerely, it is about love and survival and back to love again.

The family story is told from the vantage point of Pixie, a one-time beauty queen turned mother-of-two-and-dentist's-wife and her teen-aged son, Ezra - stepson-to-Pixie's dentist husband. Along the journey we meet extended family and see what they have done to cope with the tragedy and twists and turns of life which bring us careening away from life and then, eventually - seem to boomerang us back, eventually, to ourselves.

Baggott's writing is exceptionally compelling. Here are two of my favorite sections:

From page 45, told by Pixie:

"You see, memory is its own animal. It can hibernate, spawn, and riseup - moths in a well lit room, each thing body lifted by fierce wings. It doesn't make sense, but sometimes the moths are fireflies - their fiery hearts are what light the room. I'm trying to explain memories as things with wings. I'm trying to explain my mind, and it's a faulty, desperate thing. Listen, an ordinary woman, unpacking groceries in a bright kitchen in a cheery colonial, a mother of two, a dentist's wife, could choke to death on so many white moths and fireflies."

From page 241, told by Ezra:

"I wished it was an old train, one with steam, one just about to set off into a fog. I wanted to lose my father in a cloud, but he was standing there, with his heart beating in his chest, blood running through his veins, his lungs pulling and pushing air. I preferred the ghost. There was a gust of wind, a hot breeze, and the Phillies baseball cap flipped off my father's head, backward, behind him, into the train and he turned around to go after it."

I love the rhythm of the writing and the clear, evocative emotion-pictures Baggott uses... while at the same time feeling just a touch of the narrator's tendency to "stand back" from the scene.

My suggestion is to read this book and feel it for yourself -

In The Miss America Family (now out in paperback), Julianna Baggott has blown past an already high bar set by her first novel, Girl Talk, which was both a literary success and a bestseller. You can read a synposis of the book in other reviews, and it's a great story--you'll want to know what the main characters Pixie the aging beauty queen and her sickly, sarcastic son Ezra have to say and what happens to them. So let me just focus on the incredible experience it is to read this book. It wakes you up, flings you out of your normal ways of seeing, and the familiar no longer seems quite what it was anymore. Here's a few lines from one of the many pages I've bookmarked: "The room is filled with white moths, blurry, so thick with wings that I can barely breathe. I would whisper to my brother now, if I could, that my father was not the enemy, that I was not a country to be saved. Stop here, I'd tell him, with everyone as they are. And I try to stop, too, looking at my kids, my husband, stumbling down the hall. We are all real, suddenly obviously ourselves in a room. The moths escape through open windows. And it's like looking through the curve of clear water in a glass jar. I slip into my body, the tight fit of being stitched into this skin."

Do yourself a favor and get this book. Read it--you'll fly through it because you won't want to stop--and then read it again.

I absolutly loved this book. It was even better than "Girl Talk", if that is possible. Ezra is introduced first. He is the son of a "want to be Miss America" with problems of her own and father who eventually confesses to him that he is gay.In the beginning of the book we learn that Ezra's parents are divorced and his mother is remarried. Her husband is a poor excuse for a dentist who seems to like "smoozing" at the golf course with his cronies more than spending time with his family. Pixie the mother is full of problems. This develops into a sort of a fixation that includes participating in beauty contests when she was younger. I beleive all this is done so she can be admired by people but never touched. She does have a kind of connection with her son Ezra which is closer than most of her relationships in her life. I really felt sorry for Ezra's sister. She was kind of neglected in all of this emotional family mess. I would have liked to hear more about her. I think becuase the dentist was her father, Pixie inadvertantly ignored her. She resented her husband so much that she could not give the girl the love I think she craved. The revealed secret was hidden so well that I was even surprised by the outcome. I think what I liked most about this boof that even though it does have tis heartbreaking moments, they are infused with humor at the right moments. I think this makes Ms. Baggotts books all the more appealing.

Julianna's books just [draw] you in. Her most recent.."The Miss America Family" put me right in the novel along side of Pixie and Ezra and the rest of the characters. What I most loved was the availablity of palpable feelings from these intricate figures. Ezra is the kind of character who makes you feel as if you arent the only one who doesn't understand their place in this world. Pixie makes you think that even if you may think you know who you are...you may just be wrong. I loved how even though both of their lives were dramtically changed by tragedy and heartache that they didnt give up on each other; that in the end they were just a "normal family". I recommend this delight to any and all!

A fascinating, funny, wise, and heartbreaking story, this one leads us on the quest for fathers, good, bad, indifferent, but always mysterious. Is your daddy the man in the dark, the man in the convertible, or the man who pulls teeth? Julianna Baggott's characters, the appealing and frustrated son Ezra, the appealing and frustrated mom Pixie, find each other as much as they find their fathers. Ezra, child of a Miss New Jersey and a closet gay, discovers the best of all possible worlds through his relentless honesty and his willingness to ask hard questions. Pixie, his beauty-pageant mom, finally comes to a similar resolution and a separate peace. Read this book. Everybody who has ever been caught in the middle of families needs it.

Juliana Baggot sure hit the nail on the head with this one. The story of the dysfunctional middle-class family is told from the standpoint of mother AND son, which contributes to its mesmerizing plot. While the family looks quintesential on the outside, the main characters are complex and sometimes bizzare. Ezra is coming into his manhood and questions his views on life, as well as his sexuality. Pixie is struggling with her own identity and having somewhat of what one would call a quarter to mid life crisis. The author follows a summer of milestones, heartache, laughs and sadness. This is definately a must read and hard to put down, as it leaves the reader wanting to know what's in the characters' thoughts and what will happen next.

This isn't the type of book I would normally pick up and read, but I was pleasantly surprised. "The Miss America Family" is very well written - at times hilarious and at times heartwrenching. Julianna Baggott's style of alternating between Ezra and Pixie's points of view gives a lot of depth to the characters. Baggott makes situations, seemingly very strange on the surface, seem not so strange or even normal upon closer examination. This novel made me look at my own family a little bit differently. Maybe they're not so weird, after all.