[ Originally I wrote this in January 2008. ]

Jane St. Anthony.  Grace Above All.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.  176 pages.  Age 9 to 12.

Grace Above All reads like a lazy summer day, appropriate for its cabin-on-a-lake vacation setting, which exists outside of the passage of time.  Sure, the days may pass slowly as the weeks fly by, but such a vacation spot remains unchanged year after year.  This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to determine what year the novel is set in.  The clues are sparse.  The story must occur in or after 1966, because it makes reference to the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” but it was long enough ago that child safety restraints were unthought of, Little Lulu was on comic stands, and penny candy actually cost a penny (or less).

Not much happens after the second chapter.  Girl meets boy, and eventually summer ends.  The prose is typically unspectacular, letting its moments of brilliance stand out and shine.  The same could be said for the character development.  Many of the characters are one-dimensional.  For example, the love interest is a stock charming, handsome boy-next-door figure.  The mother, pegged as lazy and neglectful, is given no reason for these character traits—no childhood trauma, no mental illness…she’s just lazy.  But Grace, the narrator, gains some depth as the pages turn.  The aching and excitement she feels as she awkwardly navigates her way into her first love is hauntingly familiar.

Grace experiences a few minor epiphanies as she works at making sense of her world, but there is no dramatic character change.  During the anticlimactic confrontation between Grace and her mother, and in the shallowly sloping denouement that follows, the heroine and her nemesis make only minor, nearly imperceptible behavioral changes.  One could hardly expect more from a book that spans not-quite-two weeks.  The resolution may overgeneralize a little, but it doesn’t pretend to explain anything, or even give much hope for lasting character change.  In short, it is realistic.

Quoatable:

As close to absolute truth as humanly possible:

“Hot dogs wrapped in Wonder Bread were hateful.” (p. 6)

Yes, they should have:

“The Girl Scouts should have been dumped in the middle of a lake instead of taking lessons in that smooth chlorinated bath at the junior high.” (p. 11)

They’re so Catholic!

“Pinky stood in front of the Order window, which reminded Grace of the confessional at church.  ‘I coveted my neighbor’s root beer float four times,’ she imagined saying to the girl behind the screen.” (p. 35)

“Arms extended in front of her, she carried Polly, as if presenting a ceremonial flag, or, perhaps, a ninety-two-pound communion wafer.” (p. 134)