Mermaids

Mermaids by Dann, Patty. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780312333942.

"Mrs. Flax was happiest when she was leaving a place, but I wanted to stay put long enough to fall down crazy and hear the Word of God. I always called my mother Mrs. Flax." So begins this extraordinary first novel about one wild year in the life of fourteen-year-old Charlotte Flax, when she and her sister Kate move with Mrs. Flax into a sleepy 1960s Massachusetts town. Mrs. Flax is a woman who wears polka-dot dresses and serves hors doeuvres for dinner every night, and Kate is a child who basically wants to be a fish. And then theres Charlotte, who in Patty Danns hands, is transformed into a young woman of infinite whim and variety. Charlottes main ambition in life is to become a saint, preferably martyred, though shes Jewish. Shes smitten with the shy young caretaker at the convent at the top of the hill. Dann has created a young girl who accepts the unkindness of the mad universe in which shes whirling and takes it on with a savage glee. Charlotte Flax is like no one you have ever met--and someone you know very well.