Innocence (Hardcover)

by Jane Mendelsohn (Author)

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

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; First Edition 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 edition (August 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573221643
• ISBN-13: 978-1573221641
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,389,878 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 28 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

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More beautiful than poetry, May 31, 2002

By	Claire Hennessy (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Innocence (Paperback)

Jane Mendelsohn's writing has a haunting, lyrical quality to it that makes you want to wrap yourself up in the words and never stop reading. Beckett's story of an evil stepmother, suicidal peers, a father she can't trust anymore and a boy she loves is vague at times, almost dream-like, but that's part of the effect. "Innocence" is a coming-of-age, conspiracy-riddled, horror masterpiece. Highly recommended.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon..., September 5, 2000

By A Customer

I hardly ever agree with The New Yorker, but they were right about this novel: it's mesmerizingly bad. To paraphrase what Kirkus or PW said about Boston Teren's equally crummy novel God Is A Bullet: when it's not awfully bloody, it's bloody awful. The prose is minimalist (one sentence paragraphs, no quotation marks, anemic characterizations), but there are lots of awful similes (the sky went black as a limousine, the city turned like channels) and examples of overwriting (...a red and orange and purple massacre, spilling its guts...), not to mention characters with names like Beckett, Myrrh, and Sunday. Apparently, it took Jane M. years to write this trash and, despite how mesmerizingly bad it turned out, you can really feel her straining for the book's precise, ultra-lean prose and its mindboggling, can-you-top-this?, visionary metaphors (unfortunately, they come off like bad special effects). As the dust jacket suggests, Innocence is indeed a page turner, but only because you'll want to see how bad it can get (and it gets very, very bad). The tea party at the end is like that bad old joke about the vampire who goes to a bar and orders a cup of hot water....Since movies play such a big role in this novel, I'd like mention that I think Jane M. rips off Jean Rollin and Dario Argento (notably, Suspiria) far more than either Michael Lehman or Brian DePalma (though Dr. Kent is an awful lot like the Michael Caine character in Dressed to Kill...). Anyway, I'm giving it five stars because Innocence: A Novel is so bad it's good. Don't miss it; it's probably the worst of the year.