Summary
It's a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn-a perfect September day. Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She's out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the news: A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Her mother's buildingThrough the eyes of thirteen-year-old Wendy, we gain entrance to the world rarely shown by those who documented the events of that one terrible day: a family's slow and terrible realization that Wendy's mother has died, and their struggle to go on with their lives in the face of crushing loss.Absent for years, Wendy's real father shows up without warning. He takes her back with him to California, where she re-invents a life that comes to include a teenage mother, living on her own in a one-room apartment with a TV set and not much else; her father's cactus-grower girlfriend, newly reconnected with the son she gave up for adoption twenty years before; a sad and tender bookstore owner who introduces her to the voice of Anne Frank and to his autistic son; and a homeless skateboarder, on a mission to find his long-lost brother.Over the winter and spring that follow, Wendy moves between the alternately painful and reassuring memories of her mother and the revelations that come with growing to know her real father for the first time. Pulled between her old life in Brooklyn and a new one three thousands miles away, Wendy is faced with a world where the usual rules no longer apply but eventually discovers a strength and capacity for compassion and survival that she never knew she possessed.At the core of the story is Wendy's deep connection with her little brother, back in New York, who is grieving the loss of their mother without her. This a story about the ties of siblings, about children who lose their parents, parents who lose their children, and the unexpected ways they sometimes find one another again. Set against the backdrop of global and personal tragedy, and written in a style alternately wry and heartbreaking, The Usual Rules is an unexpectedly hopeful story of healing and forgiveness that will offer readers, young and old alike, a picture of how, out of the rubble, a family rebuilds its life.
Author Notes
Joyce Maynard was born on November 5, 1953. She first came to national attention in 1973 with the publication of her New York Times cover story An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life, which she wrote while a freshman at Yale University. Since then, she has been a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, a syndicated newspaper columnist, and a regular contributor to NPR. Her writing have also been published in numerous magazines including O, The Oprah Magazine; Newsweek; The New York Times Magazine; Forbes; Salon; San Francisco Magazine; and USA Weekly.
She has written both fiction and nonfiction works including The Usual Rules, The Cloud Chamber, Internal Combustion, After Her, and her memoirs Looking Back and At Home in the World. Maynard's memoirs include details about her relationship with J. D. Salinger when she was 18 years old and attending Yale University. To Die For was adapted into a movie starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon and Joaquin Phoenix and Labor Day was adapted into a movie starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin.
(Bowker Author Biography)
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Maynard brings the 9/11 tragedy to readers through its effect on one extended family. Because of a fight, Wendy, 13, didn't speak to her mother that fateful morning before she left for school and her mother went to work on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center. In the aftermath of the disaster, Wendy, her stepfather, and her four-year-old half brother go about in a daze until she is picked up and moved to California by her father. The divorce had been difficult and the girl doesn't know much about Garrett, who has few, if any, parenting skills. In California, her life spreads out to include all sorts of new acquaintances, from Garrett's cactus-growing, maternal girlfriend to an unwed teenage mother with serious coping problems, a homeless skateboarder, a bookstore owner, and his autistic son. The well-developed characters are likable individuals, and each one has a different view of life. In the end, Wendy has learned a new set of life principles that includes an appreciation for those who love her and for the variety of insights others have to offer. This story could have been maudlin and overwrought; it is instead immensely readable and thought provoking. Wendy is a real teen and her ecisions are correct for her and the young woman she is becoming. This well- paced novel looks forward positively rather than backward with anguish, and will reward those who pick it up.-Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
While the first 50-odd pages of Maynard's (To Die For; At Home in the World)new novel are emotionally harrowing, perseverance is rewarded. Set both in Brooklyn and the small town of Davis, Calif., following the events of September 11, the book tells the coming-of-age story of a girl whose mother goes to work one morning and doesn't come back. Wendy, who must bear the burden of having the last conversation with her mother end in anger, must also help care for her four-year old half-brother, Louie, while her stepfather, Josh, struggles to deal with his own grief. Attempting to escape her depressing surroundings and numb state of mind, Wendy leaves her family and best friend to live in California with her estranged father, Garrett. There she meets a colorful cast of characters, including Garrett's cactus-loving girlfriend, Carolyn. She also encounters bookstore owner Alan, who affectionately cares for his autistic son; a young single mother struggling to parent her newborn; and a homeless skateboarding teenager in search of his long-lost brother. The lack of quotation marks to set off dialogue makes the text difficult to read at times, and Louie seems a little too adult, even for a precocious child, but the intense subject matter and well-crafted flashbacks make for a worthy read. Though some may be tempted to charge Maynard with exploiting a national tragedy, most readers will find the novel an honest and touching story of personal loss, explored with sensitivity and tact. Maynard brings national tragedy to a personal level, and while the loss and heartache of her characters are certainly fictional, the emotions her story provokes are very real. (Feb. 22) Forecast: Presented by St. Martin's as "the first work of fiction to come directly out of the September 11 experience" (which it is not; Lawrence Block's Small Town, for one, reviewed in Forecasts, Jan. 20, stems directly from those events), this novel should appeal to a wide spectrum of readers, including those who have avidly followed the long career of the sometimes controversial author. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Maynard (Where Love Goes, 1995, etc.) rushes into the breach with the story of a 13-year-old girl whose mother is killed on September 11, 2001. As it begins, former dancer Janet (good enough to have understudied in A Chorus Line) is an executive secretary at a company on the World Trade Center's 87th floor, divorced from Wendy's irresponsible father Garrett and happily remarried to wonderful, domestic, bass player Josh, father of Janet's four-year-old son Louie. Maynard's chapters on the apocalyptic day when Janet doesn't come home-and on the surreal subsequent waiting period-are flatly descriptive. Josh and Louie are devastated; Wendy's grief is compounded by guilty memories of typically teenaged sullenness and meanness. When Garrett turns up after four years of no contact, wanting to take Wendy with him to California, she blankly acquiesces. Everyone she meets there is a case study in loss: Garrett's girlfriend Carolyn gave up her illegitimate baby two decades before; bookstore owner Alan has an institutionalized, autistic son and a wife who can't deal with it; 17-year-old Violet has kept her baby but can't manage him; cute skateboarder Todd (Wendy's first kiss) is looking for the older brother separated from him when their parents divorced; Garrett himself has a disapproving mother who dies before he can resolve their relationship. There's little surprising about these characters, or about the books Alan gives Wendy to help her cope (Anne Frank's diary, A Member of the Wedding, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). But when the whole mismatched crew gets together for an oddball Thanksgiving, it's touching, as is Wendy's ultimate realization that "something had begun to grow back in her . . . she was alive again." A conclusion brings disaster to enough minor characters that a generally upbeat tone doesn't seem too saccharine. Profound, no, but sincere and heartfelt: could be the affirmative novel about 9/11 that a lot of readers are waiting for. Author tour
Booklist Review
In the aftermath of September 11, the usual rules don't apply, as this sometimes wrenching, ultimately cathartic novel shows. On the evening before, 13-year-old Wendy argues with her mom, who works on the 87th floor of a twin tower and doesn't come home. That leaves Wendy; her beloved four-year-old half brother, Louie; and her stepfather, Josh, a lovable bass player and househusband who could always take care of everything, until now. So when laid-back Californian Garrett, Wendy's irresponsible father, shows up unexpectedly at the door to take her home with him, she hopes for benevolent change--or at least no longer being subjected to pitiful stares. Avoiding putting Wendy in school, Garrett makes connections with the owner of a secondhand bookshop, an unwed teenage mother, and a skateboarder on a quest, eventually sharing Wendy's pain and deciding where she belongs. The unwavering understanding of the teenage protagonist on the part of the adult characters may strain credulity, and losses suffered throughout threaten to overwhelm; still, this is a well-wrought and heartfelt portrayal of the people left behind. Michele Leber
Library Journal Review
In what might be the first, but certainly not the last, novel about the effects of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the friends and relatives of the victims, Maynard (To Die For) offers a sensitive account of how 13-year-old Wendy copes with the death of her mother. To escape her grief-and the guilt she feels because she had a fight with her mother the morning of the attacks-Wendy decides to leave her stepfather and little brother, Louie, in Manhattan and move in with her father, who has been largely absent from her life and lives in California. Through the people she comes to know, including her father's cactus-growing girlfriend, the homeless teenage boy whom she befriends, and especially the owner of a bookstore who recommends good reads, Wendy gradually realizes that she still has a responsibility to the living and that by leaving New York she has abandoned Louie. For the most part, Maynard does a wonderful job of getting inside Wendy's head, especially at the beginning, and the relationship between brother and sister is very well handled. But once Wendy gets to California, the book's momentum flags, and all of the various subplots seem forced. Recommended for large public libraries.-Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.