Customer Reviews

Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing Up in the 1970s

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In the pages of Miss American Pie, Margaret Sartor allows the reader to craw inside her head and feel the comical, quixotic and paradoxically, angst-filled, and analytical reflections of her life and her richly-described family and friends. Growing up in the same era with a simlar family, I was transported back to my own adolescence. However, growing up in a very different environment, many of Margaret's experiences were as surreal to me as life on Mars. Through this book, I re-evaluated my priorities, my belief systems, and my notions on what is right and wrong. Just as importantly, I had a heck of an enjoyable ride all the way through. So, when is the movie coming out?

As a New York transplant who grew up in the deep south I find myself transfixed and a little heartbroken by this absolutely wonderful book. Margaret Sartor's account of her teenage years spent in the town of Montgomery, Louisiana made me miss something I thought I had escaped... home.

Sartor's descriptions of romance and family are alternatly hilarious and heartbreaking. Miss American Pie ALMOST makes me want to relive my adolescence! But, as Sartor seems to have done, I would pay more attention the second time around. Read this book!

Margaret Sartor is a native of Monroe, Louisiana, who graduated from high school in 1977 and then went off into the world. She is a respected photographer who teaches at Duke University. Now Sartor has published a memoir of an unusual sort. MISS AMERICAN PIE consists of Sartor's diaries from ages 12 to 18. In the midst of the kind of teenage angst that is common to most of us, Sartor was able to turn her budding artist's eye on herself and those around her. The result is a memoir that takes us beyond the everyday, into a mind that is bright and intelligent, questioning the world around her even as she tries to fit in. Full of self-awareness and keen observation, MISS AMERICAN PIE is the story of one girl's journey into adulthood, but in some ways it is the story of us all.

Like all good Southern writers, Margaret Sartor sets the scene in her introduction to her memoir, MISS AMERICAN PIE: "Montgomery, Louisiana, isn't a very small town, but it's small enough. In the 1970s, the divorce rate was nonexistent, church attendance was roughly 100 percent, and the rules of proper behavior were generally agreed upon, if often ignored....We purchased cigarettes from vending machines, rode bikes without helmets, and thought seat belts were for wimps...On the whole, I would say my hometown was entirely typical of its time and place, more confused than reactionary, a sort of stranglehold of befuddlement."

What follows are the diary entries of Sartor during her delicate, angst-filled teen years from 1972 to 1977. Though her daily accounts are sometimes brief ("August 12 --- I am 14 years old today. Got perfume and money"), others highlight the political climate at the time, through the unfiltered eyes of an innocent young girl as yet unjaded by the world: "August 5th --- No one knows what the school board is going to do. If they don't come up with a desegregation plan, then schools can't open. A monkey at the zoo bit two people from town."

Sartor's teenage self also struggles with boys, her own burgeoning desires, her faith, her family, and her unruly hair. She grapples with her conflicted feelings about love, speculates about who will ask her to the school dance and wonders if she will ever be satisfied with her life.

Some readers might find the short entries somewhat tedious ("November 20 --- My butt still hurts"), but Sartor bookends her diary with an introduction and an epilogue filled with her insights as an adult, which serves to place her childhood observations in thoughtful context. She also updates her readers on the whereabouts of her friends and family that figure heavily in her teenage diary, which helps to form a more complete picture of a certain place and time. Even readers who don't share her southern background will relate to her voice and story.

MISS AMERICAN PIE can best be summed up by the Philip Larkin epigraph that Sartor opens her memoir with: "That this is a real girl in a real place, In every sense empirically true! Or is it just the past?"

--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller

I read this book in just a few sittings, and then recommended it to my mom and all of my girlfriends. (They all loved it too) Although there is nothing particularly remarkable or extraordinary about this girl's life, you feel like you're allowed in on all of her secrets, a feeling that appeals to most women I know. The format, with short diary entries, made the reading go very quickly.

From the first word, I felt like I was the author of Miss American Pie. Margaret Sartors' diary had pieces of my own. The seventies were a great time to grow up, even with all the experimentations, most of us did grow up to be happy. I'm glad to have read this book and hope to read more of her books.

Miss American Pie is not a typical stuffy memoir because it's taken from the author's own diary entries from when she grew from a child into a teen back in the '70s. As a child of the '70s, I could relate on so many levels.

I have a special place in my heart for southern writers, because I just think they emote better on paper than writers from any other region or country. Margaret Sartor has a poetic way with her words, and there are some lovely passages in this book.

Sartor's not afraid to open up and let us see her friends, family and even herself in all their positive and/or negative lights. Like any teen diary, Sartor's is poignant, funny and, at times, selfish. I was a little side blinded when a new family member came out of left field!

I enjoyed what few photos there are, and really appreciated the epilogue that updated what her cast of characters were up to these days.

Thanks for the interesting read, Mrs. Sartor. Hope to read more from you in years to come.

Beautifully written introduction and prologue bookend diary entries that are both universal and unique. Sartor writes from the perspective of a talented painter and photographer, and is no less gifted in this art form. Each one of us can find our own stories sifted throughout her daily entries. In the end we are reminded above all else to search our own histories and recall and embrace those events which guided our individual developments as spiritual people.

I was born in the hometown that was the setting of this book and grew up in a nearby town. The book really captured growing up in the South or anywhere. I loved the book and will recommend it for my book club. Margaret Maring

I spent much of my childhood in the same area and time as Ms. Sartor, although I was not really from the same socio-economic class. Still, the curiosities and insecurities we all go through during adolescence seem universal. Her book really brought back the time and the place for me. (The Ouachita river, DeSiard, Howard Griffin Land 'O' Toys!) It felt so sweetly nostalgic that I didn't want it to end. Thank you for sharing it with us, Ms. Sartor. I would never be so brave.