Swanna in Love

Belle (High Maintenance) returns with a funny and intimate portrait of a precocious 14-year-old girl whose family life is ruptured in 1982. At summer camp, Swanna is relieved to be free from the stress caused by her parents’ recent separation. But when her mother, a self-involved poet, pulls Swanna from the bus back home to New York City, she’s horrified to discover that she’s not going to see her Upper West Side apartment anytime soon. Swanna and her nine-year-old brother, Madding, are heading north to Vermont with her mother and her mother’s new boyfriend, an Elvis-obsessed artist named Borislav, who has been awarded a spot in an artists’ colony there. Children aren’t allowed in the colony, however, so Swanna and Madding are forced to sleep in the bed of Borislav’s truck. Unable to reach her dad in New York, Swanna sees herself as the only adult in the situation: “I hated when strangers talked to me like a child.... I took the subway every day with lunatics.” One day at a bowling alley, she meets a man named Dennis, a 37-year-old married doctor and father of two. A few days later, Dennis picks Swanna up while she’s on an angry walk near the artists’ colony, and she turns up her charm, recognizing him as her way out. Soon, they’ve embarked on an affair as head-spinning as it is ill-considered. Whip-smart dialogue and a convincing teenage perspective add heft to this comic novel. Belle breaks hearts with the story of Swanna’s first love. Agent: Douglas Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.)