Maynard and Jennica

Delson, Rudolph. Maynard & Jennica. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

The most astounding thing about this book isn't so much that it fulfills the inside flap's truth-in-advertising about the dozens of narrators all telling the story in their own voices. Nor is it the cleverly cute front and back covers. It is that each of these narrator voices is someone you know, or someone you feel you know from too much TV. Which is nice, considering that a major theme of the book seems to be that people are not the special snowflakes they imagine themselves to be. We are all just playing a part. Even our main characters. Maynard, for instance, sounds a lot like me on the subject of September 11th, 2001 (sadly I don't have his old-timey need to be distinguished in dress and manner.) Jennica, throughout the entirity of the story, sounds exactly like my friend Becca's* speaking voice, but not her written or prose voice. And the book- despite some confusing and occasionally longwinded narratives- generally manages to be funny, sweet, biting, and all those other words that we are supposed to use to describe good books. In fact, I liked this book so much that I read the whole author's page just to squeeze the last juicy drop of sweet biting funniness. Good to the dog-poop filled raindrop**.



*name changed to protect the less-than-innocent.
**read the book and win the prize of understanding my reference!