Book Reviews
Wordsworth's prescription for successful poetic writing called for emotion recollected in tranquillity, but in the post-millennial world his advice is decidedly outdated. As if to prove it, a mere 18 months after the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the intrepid Joyce Maynard has delivered one of the first novels incorporating that day's horrific events.... [The author's] gift for creating realistic and heartfelt domestic moments succeeds in convincing us that Wendy has found a reason to go on in the midst of her tremendous sorrow, and that she, like her heroine Anne Frank, still believes 'in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.'"
New York Times Book Review
Haunting.... Maynard's fictional survivor provides deeper solace than the spiritual cheerleading that often applies to coping with loss in our culture.... Maynard's feel for the workings of a 13-year-old's internal voice distinguishes The Usual Rules in the same way writer Judy Blume did a generation earlier in Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.... [Maynard] speaks to a generation of young girls who are trying to navigate through a culture of loss, of wanting to belong to a family and at the same time free themselves from the usual rules.... [She] explores the idea of family as much as she examines the culture of loss.
Kathy Balog - USA Today
It is a sign of Maynard's somewhat gauche good-heartedness that she has already produced this novel about September 11th. The protagonist, Wendy, is a thirteen-year-old girl who has just begun to rebel against her mother. The mother goes to work in the World Trade Center, and doesn't come home; Wendy is left with a load of inchoate guilt and misery, a devoted stepfather, an adored half brother, and a father in California, who, after years of neglect, is suddenly interested in her. Wendy flees to her father and spreads love the way Johnny Appleseed planted trees. The idea is that this heals her. Minor characters—a San Francisco waif in search of his brother, a teen-age mother, a bookshop owner with an autistic son—endure less heartwarming outcomes, but Maynard's overriding impulse is palliative.
The New Yorker
She seems to understand a teenager's grief. Readers...will find it impossible not to root for Wendy as she figures out how to get on with her life.
People
While the first 50-odd pages of Maynard's (To Die For; At Home in the World) new novel are emotionally harrowing, perseverance is rewarded. Set both in Brooklyn and the small town of Davis, Calif., following the events of September 11, the book tells the coming-of-age story of a girl whose mother goes to work one morning and doesn't come back. Wendy, who must bear the burden of having the last conversation with her mother end in anger, must also help care for her four-year old half-brother, Louie, while her stepfather, Josh, struggles to deal with his own grief. Attempting to escape her depressing surroundings and numb state of mind, Wendy leaves her family and best friend to live in California with her estranged father, Garrett. There she meets a colorful cast of characters, including Garrett's cactus-loving girlfriend, Carolyn. She also encounters bookstore owner Alan, who affectionately cares for his autistic son; a young single mother struggling to parent her newborn; and a homeless skateboarding teenager in search of his long-lost brother. The lack of quotation marks to set off dialogue makes the text difficult to read at times, and Louie seems a little too adult, even for a precocious child, but the intense subject matter and well-crafted flashbacks make for a worthy read. Though some may be tempted to charge Maynard with exploiting a national tragedy, most readers will find the novel an honest and touching story of personal loss, explored with sensitivity and tact. Maynard brings national tragedy to a personal level, and while the loss and heartache of her characters are certainly fictional, the emotions her story provokes are very real.... This novel should appeal to a wide spectrum of readers, including those who have avidly followed the long career of the sometimes controversial author.
Publishers Weekly
(Adult/High School) Maynard brings the 9/11 tragedy to readers through its effect on one extended family. Because of a fight, Wendy, 13, didn't speak to her mother that fateful morning before she left for school and her mother went to work on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center. In the aftermath of the disaster, Wendy, her stepfather, and her four-year-old half brother go about in a daze until she is picked up and moved to California by her father. The divorce had been difficult and the girl doesn't know much about Garrett, who has few, if any, parenting skills. In California, her life spreads out to include all sorts of new acquaintances, from Garrett's cactus-growing, maternal girlfriend to an unwed teenage mother with serious coping problems, a homeless skateboarder, a bookstore owner, and his autistic son. The well-developed characters are likable individuals, and each one has a different view of life. In the end, Wendy has learned a new set of life principles that includes an appreciation for those who love her and for the variety of insights others have to offer. This story could have been maudlin and overwrought; it is instead immensely readable and thought provoking. Wendy is a real teen and her ecisions are correct for her and the young woman she is becoming. This well- paced novel looks forward positively rather than backward with anguish, and will reward those who pick it up. —Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA
School Library Journal
Joyce Maynard...conveys with poignancy and realism Wendy's struggle to cope with her mother's disappearance. As she finds her own way through the rubble and discovers pockets of hope and optimism in her future, Wendy serves as an inspiration for anyone touched by tragedy, at any age.
Bookpage
In the aftermath of September 11, the usual rules don't apply, as this sometimes wrenching, ultimately cathartic novel shows.... This is a well-wrought and heartfelt portrayal of the people [such tragedies can leave] behind. —Michele Leber
Booklist
Maynard (Where Love Goes, 1995, etc.) rushes into the breach with the story of a 13-year-old girl whose mother is killed on September 11, 2001. As it begins, former dancer Janet (good enough to have understudied in A Chorus Line) is an executive secretary at a company on the World Trade Center's 87th floor, divorced from Wendy's irresponsible father Garrett and happily remarried to wonderful, domestic, bass player Josh, father of Janet's four-year-old son Louie. Maynard's chapters on the apocalyptic day when Janet doesn't come home—and on the surreal subsequent waiting period—are flatly descriptive. Josh and Louie are devastated; Wendy's grief is compounded by guilty memories of typically teenaged sullenness and meanness. When Garrett turns up after four years of no contact, wanting to take Wendy with him to California, she blankly acquiesces. Everyone she meets there is a case study in loss: Garrett's girlfriend Carolyn gave up her illegitimate baby two decades before; bookstore owner Alan has an institutionalized, autistic son and a wife who can't deal with it; 17-year-old Violet has kept her baby but can't manage him; cute skateboarder Todd (Wendy's first kiss) is looking for the older brother separated from him when their parents divorced; Garrett himself has a disapproving mother who dies before he can resolve their relationship. There's little surprising about these characters, or about the books Alan gives Wendy to help her cope (Anne Frank's diary, A Member of the Wedding, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). But when the whole mismatched crew gets together for an oddball Thanksgiving, it's touching, as is Wendy's ultimate realization that "something had begun to grow back in her...she was alive again." A conclusion brings disaster to enough minor characters that a generally upbeat tone doesn't seem too saccharine. Profound, no, but sincere and heartfelt: could be the affirmative novel about 9/11 that a lot of readers are waiting for.
Kirkus Reviews