Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

January 2022 - Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

"Bildungsroman."

Say that three times fast.

New word for me and maybe for you. I would have thought with my interest in literature and having a mother who was both German and an English teacher, I would have come across this word sooner, but I had not. Instead, I discovered it accidentally in a google search. Maybe you already know it, but just in case it’s new to you too, it refers to a sub-genre of the coming-of-age story that centers on the psychological growth of the protagonist. The German word literally translates as educational novel.

And that brings us to fourteen-year-old Mary Jane and how her worldview and her ideas evolve during the summer of 1975 when she takes a job as a nanny for five-year-old Izzie Cone. Mary Jane Dillard is charming, delightfully naive, easily shocked, and kind, and smart, and honest, and funny.

Mary Jane has grown up sheltered in the affluent neighborhood of Roland Park in Baltimore. She goes to an all-girls private school. She helps her mother around the house. She does what she’s told. She goes to church. She sings in the choir. She swims at the Country Club and lunches there with her parents.

Her parents don’t know the Cones, but since Izzie’s father is a doctor, a respectable profession, her mother allows her to take the job. When Mary Jane discovers that Dr. Cone is, in fact, a psychiatrist and meets his patients in an office in the garage, she wonders whether he would count as a doctor in her mother’s eyes.

It was a time when children referred to adults as Mister or Dr. or Mrs. and their last name. But Mrs. Cone asks to be called Bonnie, Mary Jane’s visceral discomfort is palpable.

The contrast between Mary Jane’s home and the Cones household is a constant source of amazement, bewilderment, and shock. You can nearly see Mary Jane taking it all in wide-eyed, polite, and attentive. Where her home is structured, a place for everything and everything in its place, the Cones thrive in chaos. Books are stacked on the stove. Shoes are strewn down the hallway, and assorted items are piled on the stairs. Mary Jane’s mother has a notebook for meal planning. The Cones get carryout. Her parents are reserved in their manner and affection, while Izzie is exuberantly covered in kisses and tickled and hugged. Dr. Cone has sideburns. Mrs. Cone doesn’t wear a bra.

Mary Jane loves Izzie and loves being at the Cones. Soon though, she feels that if her mother knew what she was hearing, what she was learning, and a few of the secrets that the Cone’s are hiding, she might not be allowed to keep working there. Her fear of losing her new family leads her to tell her mother the first lie. And then another.

Everything Mary Jane thought of as normal gets questioned. There are so many things no one talks about at her house, but the Cones talk about their feelings, their bodies, and their thoughts. Nothing seems off-limits. Mary Jane learns that life can get messy, and that might be okay. The best part is that she learns to think of herself as special, to see her own talents, and discover her strength.

Mary Jane is a book to experience and enjoy. Easy and fun, but with so much humanity, wisdom, and truth.

P.S. I listened to this novel as an audiobook. The narration by Caitlin Kinnunen is spot-on as the 14-year old Mary Jane and if you are mixing listening with reading, I recommend you add this one for your TBH list. (TBR To Be Read: TBH To Be Heard?)