Editor s Note: We ve had this piece on the schedule to run today for a while, but in an odd coincidence, it turns out that Mona Simpson is the biological sister of Steve Jobs. .
1. Anywhere but Here , by Mona Simpson . Set in the 1960s and 70s, the book follows the 12-year-old Ann August as she and her twice-divorced mother, Adele, move from Bay City, Wis., to Beverly Hills, Calif., with little more than a new car and vague aspirations of having Ann get television work in Hollywood. It s a book that I think provides a nice picture of my own past not in literal ways, but emotional, or perhaps even generational as well as one that might give some insight into what the future might hold for those on the cusp of figuring out what life has to offer.
I first read it in college, a few years after it was published in 1986. As a 20-year-old, I remember being excited by Simpson s prose, which seemed almost miraculously informal and lyrical, particularly in comparison to some of the stilted so-called classics I slogged through in my classes. To spend time with Ann in particular (other chapters are narrated by her mother, aunt, and grandmother) felt like hanging out with a cool older sister or cousin, or maybe even one of the effortlessly precocious girls around whom I always seemed to orbit during that phase of my life. In one second she would describe a character as laughing, but not really, or admit to feeling I don t know, kind of proud, and then in the next offer some startlingly beautiful image: The weeds moved under the water like swollen hair. I pulled the cattail hard with my hand and the silver seeds blew off into the tall grass like scattered wishes.
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