Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey
Continued from Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
==========
Chapter 3, titled "Keep Care of Me"; Chapter 4, titled "Spin the Bottle"; Chapter 5 , titled "Interesting" and Chapter 6, titled "August 9, 1974" tell Jennifer's life into 1974, when she was 14 years old.
The writing continues to be intelligent and eloquent.
Practically all readers of this books will be females. As one of the few male readers, I was particularly interested in Jennifer's memories of her own girlhood's concerns, perceptions and experiences. She writes about older girls she admired, about wanting to grow breasts, about getting crushes on boys, about going clothes-shopping with her mother, about being scared by a man unexpectedly pawing her, and about loving horses. This aspect of the book might be commonplace for the book's female readers, but it was quite new and interesting for me.
Jennifer's life during those years was unusual because her father was a successful entertainer. Her parents traveled away from home frequently, leaving their two children at home with the family's nanny. The family vacationed abroad. The family moved to a different home every year or two.
Although the family was not fantastically rich, it was financially very comfortable. Jennifer's mother dressed fashionably. Jennifer flew round-trip from New York to California to get her braces removed. Jennifer attended a private bi-lingual school where she learned to speak French with a perfect accent.
When Jennifer was about 11 and 12 years old, her family lived in Malibu, California, where her neighbors were the family of Larry Hagman, the male star of the television show I Dream of Jeannie.
Joel Grey and Larry Hagman became best friends. Jennifer was about the same age as the daughter Heidi Hagman, and Jennifer's brother Jimmy Grey was about the same age as Preston Hagman.
The actor Peter Fonda was a family friend. The future actor Sean Penn was a classmate.
Jennifer's mother Joan (the book does not explain why she went by the name Jo Wilder) was quite a character. She sometimes walked around naked in the home. She used lots of body lotions and perfume. She was a stickler for table manners. She practiced many health fads, including yoga and meditation.
The book gave me the impression that during those years Jennifer was happy, smart and well adjusted. The only misbehavior she mentioned was that a girlfriend talked her into shoplifting a bottle of nail polish.
Like most girls, she was self-conscious about her appearance. She was a late-developer. While some people around her were casual about nudity, she herself was always modest.
Her younger brother Jimmy, who was adopted, was a handsome, charming, blond boy. Jennifer's feelings were hurt when her mother praised him as the cutest child.
I was lying on the wall-to-wall cream-colored carpeting .... The living room, in the reflected afternoon light, was dappled pale green from the lush Connecticut summer. The air was humid and thick.
And my mother said, "Your brother is beautiful. You are .... interesting-looking. I was thirteen years old. I have no recollection of the context, or what prompted her assessment, or if I had even ventured to ask her opinion, but I do remember it knocking the wind out of me. It was like a gong, or an anvil from a cartoon landing on my head.
I knew my mom loved me, and if she was just stating an unequivocal fact, which it seemed that she was. I certainly don't think there was ever any conscious malice behind it, but it's almost all I can tell you about that summer [of 1973 when she had just turned 13 years old].
 |
| Jimmy and Jennifer Grey |
 |
| Jennifer Grey |
 |
| Jimmy, Joan, Joel and Jennifer Grey |
=======
Continued in Part 5
No comments:
Post a Comment