Little Miss Strange: A Novel - Hardcover

Rose, Joanna

3.91

422 ratings by Goodreads

9781565121546: Little Miss Strange: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565121546 ISBN 13: 9781565121546

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 1997

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1997 Pacific Northwest Bookseller's Association Prize for First Novel. Sarajean is the child of love children. She lives with Jimmy Henry, a Vietnam vet she accepts as her father. Her mother, whoever she was, disappeared long ago. Sarajean scams her way through childhood, surviving on intuition, seeing her world clearly without judging it. From carelessly discarded clues, she knits together the identity she's always longed for. "An extraordinarily powerful first novel. Sarajean is impossible to forget."--Kirkus Reviews, pointered; "A wondrous, uncanny book . . . Rose has written a story so assured and accomplished that it seems the work of a seasoned novelist at the peak of her talent."--Portland Oregonian; "LITTLE MISS STRANGE is the closest thing to a perfect book that I have read in years."--Bellingham Herald.

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Review:

Set during the high-hippie era of the 1970s, Little Miss Strange is a story about a girl growing up to be a woman, but it's about growing up in a period of American life when the adults don't seem to play any of the traditional roles of caretakers or parents. Sarajean is the daughter of hippies--which is to say, of uncertain parentage--and must negotiate the strangeness of life in the rootless world into which she was born. She lives with a guy who may be her father and comes of age in the commune world of drugs, poverty, and the dropout-ethic that marks the times.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A young girl abandoned by her mother struggles to discover her origins in Denver's early-'70s hippie scene in a compelling coming- of-age debut. Five-year-old Sarajean Henry has a home and a father of sorts, but her life in downtown Denver in 1969 is decidedly exotic. Though she doesn't know it, the man she lives with isn't actually her father, and the woman who crashes occasionally in the purple-walled apartment downstairs is really her mother, but the hippie world she grows up in--a community of refugees from the conservative Midwest- -is conspiring to keep the truth of her origins from her. As Sarajean matures and reaches adolescence, she finds herself drifting from one funky apartment to another, searching for a mother's tenderness (though unable even to identify her yearning) in a cup of herbal tea with Lady Jane, a Joni Mitchelllike space cadet in embroidered jeans and wooden clogs; a friendship (and a part-time job) with the grandmotherly owner of the local thrift shop; poetry sessions with the elusive, stoned-out Tina Blue, who confides to Sarajean that she has ``fled the dark heart of America'' and is hiding; and increasingly risky escapades with Lalena, Sarajean's best friend, whose sexual abuse by her Vietnam- vet, drug-pushing father epitomizes the community's casual irresponsibility toward their young. Jimmy Henry, Sarajean's own burnt-out surrogate father, is too caught up in his heroin addiction and subsequent recovery to realize that Sarajean needs to know who her mother is. He clearly needs Sarajean, though, for stability in his life, and it's his imperfect love that saves the girl when she flees across America, seeking her mother and a stable identity for herself. An extraordinarily powerful first novel in which what is not said often seems infinitely more important than what is. Sarajean is impossible to forget. (Author tour) -- Copyright �1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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