A Room on Lorelei Street

No wonder this young adult novel by Mary Pearson was honored with SCBWI's prestigious Golden Kite. You're drawn to Zoe from her first inappropriate outburst in English class, then amazed by her resilience as you're swept deeper and deeper into her story. The characters could be people you know--their quirks, their messy personalities, their coping mechanisms. You want to reach into the pages and give this gritty girl some gasoline money. With an eye for detail, Pearson pulls many threads through this teen survival story--keep an eye on the bulldog! Clever, whole, moving. Makes any reader yearn for a room on Lorelei with a landlady like Opal.

Mary E. Pearson's A Room on Lorelei Street is gripping and well-written, a bleak story with streaks of hope. A Room on Lorelei Street is the story of Zoe, a 17-year-old girl burdened by a difficult family. Her father is dead, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and her mother pretty much lives inside the bottle. Her beloved younger brother has been sent away to live with a more stable aunt and uncle, who have no room for Zoe, while Zoe is left to care for her irresponsible and needy mother. One day Zoe sees a sign advertising a room for rent in a gracious home on Lorelei Street. She is unable to resist the lure of getting away from her mother, and of being in a place that's all her own, clean and quiet and safe. She rents the room (more of a studio apartment) from the quirky but kind Opal, and finds it everything she has dreamed of. However the ties of family and guilt are not so easy to break, and Zoe struggles with continuing demands from her family. She also struggles financially, not really able to afford living on her own while working part time while attending high school. But she's not willing to go back, either. This book made me think about all of the things that I took for granted growing up: clean clothes, abundant food, parents to attend any plays or recitals that I was in, siblings who lived in the same house. Zoe is painfully in need of someone to care about her, to put her needs first, to be what family is supposed to be. When Opal attends one of her tennis matches and cheers for her, it brings tears to Zoe's eyes. She considers it the nicest thing that anyone has ever done for her. How sad is that? How many kids are there who have no one to care about them? The ways in which Zoe acts out are not surprising, given her background, and are treated matter-of-factly by the author. The looming menace of what she will or won't do to earn money to afford her Lorelei Street haven is more disturbing. Toward the end of the book, things get increasingly difficult for Zoe, and the fragile ties tethering her to the community snap one by one. What keeps Zoe going are a few precious memories of her father's belief in her potential, and her own unquenchable sense of possibility. Zoe is a strong character, a teenage girl facing situations far beyond her years. Her landlady, Opal, is delightful, glowing with enthusiasm, despite the hardships in her life. The small, depressed town of Ruby, Texas is almost a character in the book, too. Ruby is beaten down and insular, without much economic potential, but the stars still shine overhead. And there are still beautiful rooms on Lorelei Street. This is a book that will make you think. About the connections between people. About what kids need from their parents. About what makes some people keep going, while others give up. About where responsibilities to family end, and responsibility to self beings. Mary Pearson's writing is spare and elegant, with just enough detail to make the scenes pict

This is a gripping novel about a high school girl who leaves her alcoholic mother and rents her own room. I loved everything about it. The main character, Zoe, is so well drawn she seems almost real. She has flaws, but she has a big heart and a lot of drive. I really wanted her to make it on her own, and found it difficult to put down the book until I got to the end and discovered her fate. The language is gorgeous, but it's not one of those beautiful books where nothing happens. A lot happens, with page-turning suspense througout the novel. I also liked reading about the vivid supporting characters-- the mean yet realistic grandmother, people at Zoe's school, the creepy guy who Zoe sees at work. This is my favorite teen novel of 2005.

A Room on Lorelai Street is a story of a young woman trying to make it from one day to the next and attempting to rise above her less-than-stellar unbringing. Zoe once had a family consisting of a mother, a father, a younger brother and herself. By the time she was a teenager, everything had fallen apart. Her father died. Her mother turned to alcohol. Her brother was sent away to live with relatives, but Zoe had to stay, for the sake of her mother - and her overbearing grandmother. Zoe finds a small house on Lorelai Street with a room to rent. It is owned by a kind elderly woman, and the rent is cheap, something she can afford on her salary as an afterschool waitress. She is at first hesitant to move out of her home, but when her mother does one more thing - the straw that broke the camel's back - Zoe gets out of there. What makes protagonist Zoe remarkable is that she does not lament her childhood nor blame others. She never whines about her situation. She never drowns in self-pity. She is a likable, fallible character. Set in modern-day and written in present tense, A Room on Lorelai Street is something which can be read cover-to-cover in one sitting. Not only that, but this book should appeal to teenagers and adults alike, reading it with different perspectives. Anyone who has ever struggled to make ends meet, no matter what his or her age or situation, will appreciate the numbers Zoe has to crunch, the sacrifices she has to make, and the consequences she must face. Congratulations to Mary Pearson on creating a character with heart and writing a book that will stick with readers years after they have finished it.

"All I know is something like a bird within her sang, All I know she sang a little while and then flew on" --Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter, "Bird Song" " 'You going to stand there, or you going to come up and take a look?' "Zoe jumps, her cigarette tumbling from her fingers into the gutter. Pay stubs and figures disappear from her vision, and she focuses on the person who appeared out of nowhere. A brown grocery bag is in her arms. " 'Excuse me?' she says to the wild-haired woman she saw in the garden five days ago. " 'I've seen you here three or four times now. Guessed you were checking out the neighborhood. You must've figured out by now that we don't have any roving gangs around here--a couple folks whose cheese has slid off their cracker but that's about it. So, you ready to see the room?' "Zoe thinks the old lady's voice doesn't match her attitude. She is assertive, almost snippy, confident in a crazy, old-woman way, but she is smiling, and her voice is soft, lyrical. It reminds Zoe of a bird. I'm a sucker for cool old ladies in children's and YA literature. No, not just in literature. I also love knowing cool old ladies in the real world. One of my best friends is a cool old lady who raises Nubian dairy goats up in the Sierra foothills. I think it all goes back to having had some really great teachers in junior high and high school who were of my parents' generation and who taught me so much about life and about their lives from a perspective that was different than what I'd gotten from my own parents. And it must similarly come from growing up working on my dad's construction jobs with all those old tradesmen to listen to. Those lessons continued into my post-adolescence when I returned to school in my thirties to study early childhood education (where I was usually the only guy in the class) and was taken under wing by a wise veteran teacher: an amazingly cool old lady named Teri Isaac. Last year when I reviewed TENDING TO GRACE, in which a very cool Great-aunt Agatha helps Cornelia find her voice, I mentioned some other cool old ladies I've adored in books: Gram from Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman cycle. Grandma Dowdell from A YEAR DOWN YONDER. Josie Cahill from PICTURES OF HOLLIS WOODS. Tilly and Penpen Menudo from THE CANNING SEASON. Not long after reviewing TENDING TO GRACE I got to meet Mrs. Elia Hurd in LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY. She's definitely another one for the list. (I'd sure love to know her entire life story.) "Quietly turning the backdoor key, Stepping outside she is free." --The Beatles, "She's Leaving Home" "The lady rummages through her pocket for the key. 'I still have a few things in there, but I can take them out if they don't ka-nish with your ka-nash.' She slides the key into the lock, and the door swings open." This particular cool old lady is Opal Keats. The room in that house on Lorelei Street that seventeen-year-old Zoe Beth Buckman subsequently rents from Opal is a dream come true for the