Junebug

Rating:
Summary: Offbeat, witty, and poignant
Review: Junebug, a literary novel set in Nebraska, is so entertaining it can be read in one sitting. Often laugh-out-loud funny, it is the coming-of-age story of 17-year-old Junebug Host, the daughter of Tess, a beauty queen/ax murderer who has been incarcerated in Ellisville Reformatory for Women since Junie was five. Junie is a 21st-century Holden Caulfield--only female, working-class, and more optimistic.

Irreverent Junie refers to Nebraska as "Neb-world" and fantasizes that her mom could be the model for a "Jailed Barbie" doll. Her older boyfriend chauffeurs her around town in his vintage Cadillacs. Her adoptive mother, Gloria, regales her with 1960s lore and listens to "hallucinatory" New Age Celtic music.

Junebug isn't all laughs. When Junie learns why her mother killed their neighbor--for Junie--she becomes depressed and even begins to cut herself in the bathroom.

"People in cages," she muses. "Take away the fact that they've done something wrong and what you've got is people in cages. Down at the bone, the picture of people in cages makes you too sick to hold the details in your brain. You want to puke them out of your mind."

In her sad-funny way, Junie has wisdom. And McCoy's stunning prose will make you see the prairies of Nebraska through new eyes.

In lesser hands, this could have been an "issue" book, but McCoy has produced a novel that helps us understand Junie's complicated "Neb-world" from Junie's gritty point of view.