The Miss America Family - Softcover

Baggott, Julianna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074342297X ISBN 13: 9780743422970

Publisher: Atria Books, 2003

Synopsis

Pixie Kitchy was once Miss New Jersey. Now she's married to a dentist, an ex-quarterback in turtled golf pants. Her ten-year-old daughter, Mitzie, wears Bo-peep pincurls and twirls baton. Her sixteen-year-old son, Ezra, the person who knows her best, is caught up in his fling with the podiatrist's daughter. And Pixie is consumed by the past. She confides, "I was a housewife, and I became dangerous. Sometimes it's the only way possible to regain footing in the world." In this high-wire mixture of absurdity and pathos, hilarity and darkness, one American family finds out that there is no such thing as the perfect American family, and, for better or for worse, they come together and start anew.

About this title

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's work has appeared in such publications as The Southern Review, Ms. magazine, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2000, and read on NPR's Talk of the Nation. The nationally bestselling author of The Miss America Family and Girl Talk, as well a book of poems entitled This Country of Mothers, she teaches at Florida State University and lives in Tallahassee with her husband and three children. Visit her website at www.juliannabaggott.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 074342297X
• ISBN 13: 9780743422970
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304