TWU - LS 5623 Realism, Romance & Censorship - STORY OF A GIRL: A NOVEL

YA

Zarr, Sara. 2007. STORY OF A GIRL: A NOVEL. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316014533

PLOT SUMMARY - ANALYSIS

Eighth-grader Deanna Lambert had an encounter with her brother’s best friend that casts a three year shadow over her life. The relationship with her two best friends, Lee and Jordan is tested and Deanna faces Tommy with a new found forgiveness. Deanna struggles with her relationship with her Dad and tries to keep herself from repeating the cycle of emotional distance that her family has established.  Deanna’s brother, Darren, and his wife, Stacy, live in the basement of her parent’s house with their baby, April. 

The drabness and stagnancy of her parent’s life is always on Deanna’s mind.  Zarr’s depressing description of the living situation for Deanna from the shift work of her mother and father to the summer job at a rundown pizza place, accelerate her fear that she will end up a Zerox copy of her mom and dad, stuck in her hometown of Pacifica.

The beginning of the book sets the shock and acts like a confession for Deanna.  “I was thirteen when my dad caught me with Tommy Webber in the back of Tommy’s Buick, parked next to the Old Chart House down in Montara at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night” (page 1). The reader immediately feels sorry for the fate of Deanna because of the rumors and isolation at school.  Any reader knows the importance of a reputation in a school peer setting.

The style of writing that Zarr uses with Deanna’s character is reflected in a diary-like dialogue with explicit explanations of sexual feelings and emotional frustrations between Deanna and the other characters alternating with Deanna’s thoughts. The language is authentic, harsh and crude and exposes a desperate and depressing situation that begins the book and continues dark and hopeless with the disappearance of Stacy.

Karen Coats (The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, May 2007 (Vol. 60, No. 9)) writes “There’s nothing canned or artificial about the insights here: Zarr’s very real characters speak with either the wisdom or the stubbornness they have chosen to distill from the pain of their past mistakes. Nor do Deanna’s epiphanies emerge fearless and fully formed; rather, she is slowly but surely, with faltering steps that many readers will recognize as their own, in the process of becoming someone she can like and trust.”

This has huge appeal to teens because the language is authentic and the topic of having your reputation ruined is a fear of so many teenage kids. The controller versus the controlled of Deanna and Tommy plays out in a way that leaves the reader fearful that it could happen to them.

The story of a girl is what Deanna uses to escape her own life by writing about a girl that is floating out to sea.  The sea is the emotional distance that her family put between Deanna and her mom and dad. The emotional distance evaporates as Deanna is again a child in her mom’s lap watching T.V. and her dad shows his humanity as he holds and calms April and tells Deanna they should look for a car for the next school year.

The theme is that no matter what, you can make a better life for yourself. One mistake will not ruin your life, unless you give up. When Deanna is shown kindness by Michael, Tommy, and finally her mom and dad she realizes that relationships can change for the better. Zarr finishes this book with a resounding statement of second chance by saying that “Sometimes rescue comes to you. It just shows up, and you do nothing. Maybe you deserve it, maybe you don’t. But be ready, when it comes, to decide if you will take the outstretched hand and let it pull you ashore.” (page 189)

REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

Booklist starred 03/01/07

Publishers Weekly 01/29/07

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 05/01/07

School Library Journal starred 01/01/07

Horn Book 10/01/07

Voices of Youth Advocates (VOYA) 02/01/07

Kirkus Review 12/15/.06

Wilson’s Senior High School 10/01/07

CONNECTIONS

Martin, C. K. Kelly. 2009. ONE LONELY DEGREE. New York: Random House. ISBN 9780375851636

·         Partner this poetry book in discussing a sexual encounter and two friends in love with the same boy.

Martin, C. K. Kelly. 2008. I KNOW IT’S OVER. New York: Random House. ISBN 9780375845666

·         Partner this book in discussing teenage pregnancy from the view of both the father and mother.

Lamm, C. Drew. 2003. BITTERSWEET. New York: Clarion Books. ISBN 9780618164431

·         Partner this book to explore another father-daughter relationship