Items related to The Miss America Family
In 1987 Greenville, Delaware, Ezra Stocker, the teenage son of an insomniac former Miss New Jersey and a gay absentee father, decides to use his summer vacation to set up a list of rules to live by, but a failed romance with a podiatrist's daughter and a fateful encounter with a gun turn his rules inside out. By the author of Girl Talk. 40,000 first printing.
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Review:
With The Miss America Family, Julianna Baggott (Girl Talk) gives readers the literary equivalent of the film American Beauty. Baggott shines a light on the dark side of the American family with this quirky novel narrated in turns by a mother and son. Mother Pixie is a retired beauty queen and an almost-murderer; son Ezra is an awkward teen. Ezra's chapters are long on action: he loses his virginity, fights with his stepfather, finds out his father is gay, and keeps track of his kid sister. Pixie's chapters tend toward long, philosophical monologues about beauty and femininity. Some of these are dead-on, as when she remembers the first time she realized she was beautiful: "Everybody started acting like I had a gun, like I was armed and I could kill them if I wanted. It makes strangers awfully nice to you." Other times, her narrative slips into a simplistic, almost adolescent critique of suburban dysfunction: "I'd always really wanted to be Miss America so that I could have the perfect family." Is the failure of the American dream really news to anyone? --Claire Dederer
About the Author:
Julianna Baggott has published dozens of short stories and poems in such publications as The Southern Review, Chelsea, Poetry, and Best American Poetry 2000. She is the author of Girl Talk and a book of poems, This Country of Mothers. She lives in Newark, Delaware, with her husband, poet David G.W. Scott, and their three children. Visit her Web site at www.juliannabaggott.com.
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- PublisherAtria
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0743422961
- ISBN 13 9780743422963
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages288
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THE MISS AMERICA FAMILY
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New York, NY, U.S.A.: Pocket Books, 2002
(2002)
ISBN 10: 0743422961
ISBN 13: 9780743422963
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. ISBN: 0743422961 1ST PRINTING STATED hardcover NEW/dustjacket NEW brodart covered, SIGNED in PERSON on the FULL title page by author of "Girl Talk" JULIANNA BAGGOTT. Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # SJBHB
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