Aspiring memoirist seeks success in Miss Harper Can Do It
Miss Harper Can Do It. By Jane Berentson. New York : Viking, 2009. 324 p.
Recommendation by:
Carolyn Petersen, CLRS Project Manager, Tumwater, WA.
Debut novelist and Pacific Lutheran University graduate Jane Berentson follows the dictum of “write about what you know” when she sites her story in Tacoma. (I live in Tacoma and this is the first novel I have ever come across that described the middle class Tacoma with which I’m familiar. There have been crime or detective novels set there, but I don’t hang out in seedy bars or back alleys!)
Annie Harper is a third grade teacher whose boyfriend is deployed to Iraq at the beginning of the novel. To get through the year without her boyfriend Annie decides to write a memoir which she daydreams will become a blockbuster best seller. The titles change as her life and mood progresses. The first title is: Wartime Alone Time: When Abstinence Fights for Freedom.
This book manages to be warm, funny and bittersweet. Annie and her supporting characters are engaging. Her class is spot on which is maybe why School Library Journal gave this title a starred review. Fans of women’s fiction will hope that this new author writes another book.
ISBN-13: 978-0670020775
Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 BERENTS 2009
Available as an eReader and as a Talking Book on cassette or in a digital book edition.
Not available in Braille.
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