基本信息出版社：Washington Square Press
页码：304 页
出版日期：2003年02月
ISBN：074342297X
条形码：9780743422970
装帧：平装
正文语种：英语
外文书名：美国小姐的家庭
作者简介 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.
编辑推荐 Amazon.com 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Baggott takes family dysfunction to a new level in a sophomore effort (after last year's Girl Talk) full of kookiness and calamity. It's 1987, in suburban Delaware, and Pixie Stocker, Miss New Jersey of 1970, and her 16-year-old son, Ezra, take turns narrating this tale of domestic wheeling and dealing. As the novel opens, we learn that Pixie, who divorced her first husband (a handsome household cleaner salesman and Ezra's father) has shot her second (but only in the arm). Why did Pixie shoot dentist Dilworth Stocker? What is it like for intelligent Ezra to have grown up in such a bizarre family? These are some of the questions Baggott answers over the course of her highly readable narrative. Her wit is caustic, verging on mordant: sickly young Ezra, for example, can't have a cat, but he can pet his mother's fuzzy slippers while she purrs; while in the aftermath of the shooting, Pixie tells her daughter, Mitzie, that it was "something like the death of a beloved pet, bound to happen eventually to every American family." The family also includes Pixie's mother, who's convinced humans descended from fish, not Adam, and whose take on the Immaculate Conception is that Mary should have said "no" to Gabriel. Pixie's father, drunk, drowned while attempting a Houdini escape trick, and Cliff, her brother, was killed in Vietnam after the slaughter of a village. From the hilarious Ezra's seduction by the girl next door to the hideous Pixie's beauty contest mentor's self-induced abortion Baggott explores contemporary "civilized" behavior and the imperfections of a "perfect American family" with wit and grace.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
More Girl Talk: a former beauty queen tries to make sense of her life, even as her 16-year-old son finds that his is spinning out of control. With a 12-city author tour.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Pixie, an aging Miss New Jersey, believed that the Miss America crown came with a guarantee of an idyllic family life. She fought for the title but didn't make the first cut. Over the years she has struggled for that picture-perfect family but has always come up short. She eloped with her first husband but ended up a divorced, single parent when he decided to explore his homosexuality. Her second husband, a less than skillful dentist, is a controlling, boorish man who married Pixie for her looks and, as her looks faded, so did his love. Haunted by her father's death and a part of her past she can't quite remember, Pixie fights her demons through self-medication and housecleaning while her family crumbles. With barely one foot in reality, Pixie falls over the edge when her mother reveals a closely held dark secret. Told in alternating chapters by Pixie and her 16-year-old son, Baggott's biting, darkly comedic, and brutally honest narrative takes a sardonic look at suburbia and family dysfunction. Carolyn Kubisz
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Library Journal (starred review) This second novel establishes Baggott's remarkable talent for creating characters who resonate with readers. -- Review
Richard Russoauthor of "Empire Falls"Julianna Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak, and that makes her a writer after my own heart.
Review
USA todayAn emotional and darkly comic examination of growth, loss, secrets, and lies.
Richard Russoauthor of Empire FallsJulianna Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak, and that makes her a writer after my own heart.
Library Journal (starred review)This second novel establishes Baggott's remarkable talent for creating characters who resonate with readers.