Summary and Reviews of Innocence by Jane Mendelsohn

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews Must reading for anybody who thinks teenagers today have gotten bloated with entitlement: a scarlet will-o'-the-wisp fantasy in which adults and adulthood aren't stupid stiffs but agents of unimaginable evil.

Library Journal - D Robin Nesbitt The book offers an interesting spin on the traditional coming-of-age story as it keeps the reader wondering, Is this fantasy or is this reality? Suitable for adults, this second novel by the author of I Was Amelia Earhart might also appeal to a mature young adult reader.

Booklist - Donna Seaman Mendelsohn's novels, including I Was Ame lia Earhart (1996), are distinguished by their vivid visualizations of mental states and delight in confusing the imagined with the real. Here she depicts the convulsive coming-of-age of a privileged New York teenager called Beckett, whose mother was killed by a drunk driver. Her father enrolls her in a fancy private school infamous for student suicides, then he falls in love with Pamela, the sexy school nurse. Beckett's first menstrual period hits her as hard as the vehicle that killed her mother, and once her father and Pamela decide to get married, her world turns nightmarish. Her stepmother-to-be morphs into a blood-sucking monster right out of a B horror movie, and Beckett, who sees herself reflected everywhere she looks, from mirrors to television and computer screens, fears for her life. Mendelsohn uses this obsession with appearance to dramatize the toll our image-saturated culture exacts from the young and sensitive. But she, too, is seduced by surface gloss and fails to go beyond the seductive beauty and cleverness of her narrative to achieve genuine emotion, let alone catharsis.