Erika Tamar (1934–2022)

Katie lives in the projects with her hardworking mother and her mom’s new husband (who works two jobs). She struggles to get along with some of her friends- not understanding why they’re suddenly boy crazy and obsessed with makeup and hair styles. One day walking home from school, a dog behind a fence catches her eye- a dog in the junkyard. He looks neglected and hungry. She wants to give him food and water, and later builds a shelter against the cold. The mean junkyard man thinks she’s crazy to have any interest in the mutt, but Katie’s stepfather coaches her on how to persuade him to let her feed the dog anyway. He teaches her to use tools and build a doghouse. Another boy in the neighborhood starts helping her with the doghouse project, and she thinks he’ll be her friend, but at school he completely ignores her, which makes her hurt and angry. As Katie tries to figure things out with her friends, she gradually builds a better relationship with her stepfather even though she’s suspicious he might someday leave (like her birth father did). Katie wants to rescue the junkyard dog and bring him home forever, but their housing doesn’t allow pets. At the end, many much has improved for Katie. Not all things she’s hoped for have come about, but promisingly it looks like they might very soon.… (meer)

Liesl's memories, those of a young Jewish refugee whose family had to flee Austria, are what stung me in the realest way, beyond reading a novel. Especially considering the real-life experience of this late author.

As for Liesl's Hollywood dreams and her relationship with Billy...well, given the book's title and the gradual mix of ingredients building the story, you can tell where it's pretty much going to go. But it's like a part of me still wished Liesl could hear me warning her along the way: "Noooo. Don't. Just don't..."

Oh, her frank way of narrating is so flat-out funny sometimes, and it's wonderful to see the hard-fought progress her family makes. Also, I found it pretty amazing how I as a grownup could still feel such strong embarrassment during some of her moments of Terribly Awkward Adolescence. So understandable and brilliantly cringe-worthy.

Still, I've got to admit that, unlike in the case of High Cheekbones (which I appreciated being able to read both in my adolescence and adulthood), I'm actually glad that my younger self didn't know this earlier novel existed. Liesl and Billy's story would have done me in back then.

Heck. I'm practically done in now. And maybe an author isn't supposed to admit something like this at such a particular time, but the course of the young love story here increasingly made me long for one of the books I've written: quite painful for me but not in a lightless, ill-fated sort of way.

It's one of the main reasons I became an author in the first place, though. To put out books so that I can read 'em and be satisfied by the stories.

Even so, I'm not sorry that I came across this novel and put myself through the awkwardness and funniness and ominousness and hopelessness and crushing terribleness and brilliance of it, just once.

A bibliophilic quirk, I reckon.… (meer)

It took a long time for me to find this early '90s YA novel again. It'd been quite a while since my adolescent self once read it, and I couldn't remember the title or the author's name. But I remembered how the hot-pink paperback book cover looked...

I also remembered the gist of the plot, similar to another novel I'd read around that time about a teen model, Crystal by Walter Dean Myers.

Neither one of the novels are the upbeat, happily-ever-after type, and I wanted to find High Cheekbones again for remembrance but not nostalgia. The language, with the (sometimes repetitive) uses of "hell" and "damn" and a few other words for nonliteral purposes, wasn't to my personal taste back then or now. And while the tone of the novel isn't the incredibly dark and depressing type I typically can't get through these days, even with the story's rather "PG-12" handling of matters like drug use, underage drinking, sugar daddies, grownup-and-teenager attraction, parental neglect, and mental illness, it hasn't exactly been fun reading or rereading for me and this book.

Yet, I like the novel (and better appreciate it now) because reading it back then helped to confirm something about my adolescent self. The kind of fast-lane social "thrills" that first entice Alice never appealed to me, and how her story pans out played a part in shaping the overall idea for me that how I felt was okay. A bright, full, wholesome kind of life was what I wanted, and that was okay.

Sometimes, it isn't so much about getting pleasure out of a story but rather about what the story shows or confirms to you...… (meer)