Plain Jane

Jane Singer, 19, thinks she's plain; she hates her body, and doesn't care much for her face, either. She's wrong about her appearance, but it's undeniable that her plainspoken opinions get her into trouble. Jane is an engaging narrator, treating the reader to a funny, touching coming-of-age story that marks first novelist Horowitz as a remarkably accomplished writer. The middle child in a dysfunctional Cleveland family, Jane has learned to deflect her autocratic father's temper tantrums in order to earn his love; her emotionally distant mother is showing the strain and will soon ask for a divorce. The youngest sibling, 12-year-old Willie, a chronic liar, is away at a school for problem kids. Jane is sure that she caused Willie's problems; she has expressed her guilt only to a psychiatrist, with whom she thinks she is in love, although she becomes engaged to someone else. Her older sister, Caroline, has astonished the nearly assimilated Singer family by marrying an Orthodox Jewish doctor. Refracted through Jane's wickedly observant eye and acerbic wit, the contrasting behavior of Caroline's in-laws and the secularized Singers is an iconoclastic, often hilarious social portrait. Horowitz artfully depicts her characters' foibles and society's shams in a perfectly controlled narrative whose insights are expressed with poignant resonance. Literary Guild selection . (Sept.)