BOOKS: Teenage Angst

BEGINNER’S LUCK
By Laura Pedersen
(Ballantine Books, 2003)

HEART’S DESIRE
By Laura Pedersen
(Ballantine Books, 2005)

Let me start with quote-able one-liners, the quick & easy summary position for those who want the gist in a glance:

--A terrific "new" voice!

--The straight-forward charm, eccentricity, and small-town appeal of BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE for an older teenage audience.

(I never could stick to one line! ;-)

I started BEGINNER'S LUCK with some skepticism: I wasn't sure of the target audience for a small-town coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old high school dropout, runaway, semi-professional gambler/math genius.

How could the main character, Hallie (as in the Comet) Palmer be a good role model for impressionable teenage readers? And for older readers, what would be the compelling interest, having experienced adolescent angst and 'been there, done that' to one extent or another? (Although I’m not sure how many of us were teenage gamblers?)

By the end of Chapter 1, you'll be engaged by Laura Pedersen’s straightforward, funny, clever writing style and turns-of-phrase, many having some allusion to poker or gambling, as do all the chapter titles.

By the end of Chapter 3, you'll be drawn in by Hallie herself, the first person narrator, who, in spite of her growing reputation as "the town miscreant" for various misadventures, turns out to be a very intelligent, deep-thinking, somewhat confused teenager. Not so much a hardened criminal as a hard worker with a good heart. Not so much a juvenile delinquent, at least in attitude or intent, as a typical teenager--impatient, naïve, self-conscious, and conflicted about everything: school, family, boys, sex, growing up and finding her place in the world.

By the end of Chapter 7, when the remainder of the cast of colorful characters is introduced, you'll be hooked into the wonderful world of Hallie Palmer.

In the first book, BEGINNER’S LUCK, we get to know Hallie as she drops out of high school, runs away from home (with seven brothers and sisters, and more on the way, who could blame her?!), and finds refuge and the space to sort everything out as a live-in yard person in the truly out-of-the-ordinary Stockton home.

Life is never dull with Bernard Stockton, a flamboyant (yes, that’s right, read: GAY) antiques dealer; his equally-charming, long-term boyfriend, Gil; his gracefully aging, revolutionary, free-spirited mother, Olivia; his father, the Judge, an ailing Alzheimer’s patient; and an alcoholic Chimpanzee named Rocky. Eclectic, yes. Eccentric, definitely. These characters will make you wish for small town innocence (as claustrophobic as it can be), and long for the nostalgia that people and places like this might actually still exist.

With such a colorful backdrop of characters, the plot is just as original, as Hallie matures and finds her way, even graduating from high school under the private tutelage of Olivia Stockton. She even kind of resolves the age-old Sex issue with her boyfriend, who is pressuring her, with a surprisingly explicit few pages toward the end of the book--explicit, yet very genuine, and she remains a virgin, which is a refreshing, intelligent choice in teenage literature. Congratulations to Laura Pedersen for handling this sensitive issue so well.

For mystery fans, there's even a 60-second mystery included, with Hallie as an inadvertent detective, ultimately discovering who stole the missing charity money, for which she was blamed and suffered under a heavy cloud of suspicion. (It’s a 60-second mystery because the situation is packaged and presented all wrapped up after-the-fact, within two pages--a nice little aside, but not much more than that.)

Hallie’s story continues in the second book, HEART'S DESIRE, during the summer after her first year away at college. Hallie returns to the Stockton household, pre-occupied with (someday) losing her virginity, finding true love, and figuring out if the two are inextricably linked. She's also faced with new crises to solve, both in her old family and in her new one, and another 60-second mystery, in addition to figuring out how to fund her second year of art school (legally).

The Sex issue comes up again; actually, it is pervasive throughout HEART’S DESIRE, as 17-year-old Hallie grapples with the complexities of love and sex. Laura Pedersen again handles this subject exceptionally well, with humor and sensitivity.

I enjoyed the interviews with the author at the end of each book, and look forward to continuation of the Hallie Palmer series.

Enjoy!