Just Like That

In 1968, the summer before her eighth grade year, Meryl Lee Kowalski’s best friend dies suddenly, and Meryl Lee becomes enveloped in grief and depression—which she calls “the Blank”—on Long Island. To give her a new start, her parents enroll her in a girls’ prep school on the coast of Maine; the headmistress, Dr. MacKnockater, promises to help Meryl Lee become “accomplished.” As the school year progresses and she fends off the encroaching Blank, Meryl Lee also faces classist teachers and snobby classmates while discovering a social conscience around the treatment of the school’s kitchen staff. A secondary arc follows Matt Coffin, whom Dr. MacKnockater finds living in an oceanside shack and whose dark past is never far behind. The heaviness of Matt’s story line at times eclipses Meryl Lee’s, but episodes of slapstick humor, told in Schmidt’s (Pay Attention, Carter Jones) trademark wry deadpan, are woven throughout (a disastrous formal luncheon hosting Vice-President Spiro Agnew is a standout). Though overlong and occasionally plodding, Schmidt’s rich, humane tale rewards persistent readers with moments of hilarity and heartache in a skillfully rendered Vietnam War–era boarding school setting. Ages 10–up. (Jan.)