From Amazon.com
In her 10th novel,
True to Form, Elizabeth Berg finds her way into the year 1961 and into the head of 13-year-old Katie Nash at the start of her summer vacation. Katie's world is smooth and easy with endless possibilities and sunshine. You almost expect sitcom-style canned laughter when she whines in frustration or stomps up to her room and turns the radio way up, but then almost everything Katie does fits that era's squeaky-clean conventionalities. The younger daughter of a remarried widower, Katie craves popularity, a great summer job, and a direct line to the local DJ to make requests. Newly transplanted from Texas, she settles in with her only friend, Cynthia, who shares her views on status and appearance and boys. Between a regular babysitting gig for a household of little boys and caring for an elderly bedridden woman, her summer is off to a less than auspicious start. Cynthia's mother's plot to start a Girl Scout troop and to camp out for a weekend in their living room doesn't help. Berg's plot doesn't exactly mine new territory, but Katie emerges as a girl who sees the world differently from the rest of her peers. Her poetic perspective on her surroundings and her predicaments should eventually win readers over. The period backdrop feels unformed against this portrait of a young artist-to-be, but Katie imbues it with fresh eyes.
--Emily Russin
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Berg is the master of the soft-focus, nonconfrontational women's novel, as evidenced in her 2000 Oprah Book Club selection, Open House. In her latest work, which again features the pubescent narrator first encountered in her debut novel, Durable Goods, she describes a summer in the life of 13-year-old Katie Nash. It is 1961, and Katie's mother has been dead for two years; Katie lives with her dour military father and peppy stepmother in Missouri. Resigned to allowing her strict dad to find her summer jobs, in her free time she gorges herself on junk food with her best friend, Cynthia, and works on her tan. Katie's first-person voice is deliberative and colloquial, and the story told is rarely eventful: the highlights come when Katie first starts working for a kind, needy elderly couple, the Randolphs, and wins a radio contest offering a free plane ticket anywhere in the world. Yet where does Katie choose to fly? Back to Fort Hood, Tex., where she last lived before her mother died and where she can revisit her former best friend, Cherylanne, who is slightly older than Katie and well versed in the ways of boys, clothes and getting married fast. The trip peters out when Katie realizes she really has nothing in common with boy-crazy Cherylanne. Meanwhile, Mr. Randolph secures a scholarship for Katie at the upscale school where he once taught, but even this boon becomes a hurdle when Katie belittles Cynthia to land in the rich girls' good graces. Berg lays nostalgia traps at every turn in her 10th feel-good novel, but her readers for the most part will be happy to fall into them.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
by Elizabeth Berg
by Elizabeth Berg
by Elizabeth Berg
