Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.īelly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Not a “must have” book, but one with a certain amount of appeal for its age group. Despite the fact that many of the jokes and comic situations are belabored and forced, there are several funny scenes and Jackie does turn out to be an endearing character.
While this novel’s premise is promising, the elements don’t quite gel-Jackie’s friends, while meant to be funny and quirky, are too often merely annoying and Jackie just misses being charming. But as the summer progresses Jackie realizes that sometimes you do need to listen to other, perhaps even wiser, people. Jackie blames everyone around him for his lack of progress-his parents constantly interrupt him and don’t take his “work” seriously and his friends distract him with juvenile antics. To make things even worse, he has a problem sticking with things. Jackie isn’t an untalented writer, but he lacks direction and focus and is too stubborn to take any advice or help from anyone. He also can’t decide on the genre of his groundbreaking novel-will he get rich quick by writing a hard-boiled detective story, sci-fi, a gritty western, or an “Indiana Jones”-style adventure story? During his long bouts of writer’s block, Jackie engages in normal adolescent activities-he swims on a team at the local swim club, hangs out with his pals, and gets dumped by a beautiful but unfeeling girl with whom he has absolutely nothing in common.
After all, Jackie did invest in a book called “Get Rich Quick! Write a Bestseller in Less Than a Year.” The only trouble is that Jackie can’t get past his first sentence. One thing does differentiate Jackie from his peers, though-Jackie plans to write the Great American Novel over the summer between 8th and 9th grades. His parents are a great embarrassment to him he’s having a boring and frustrating summer and his best friends don’t really understand him. In many ways Jackie Monterey, 13, is a typical teenager.
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