Elsewhere, California

Starred review from April 23, 2012
Avery is nine when her family escapes L.A.’s gang violence and moves to the suburbs, becoming the only black people in the neighborhood. Feeling alienated, but impressionable, Avery adjusts by way of Tiger Beat, Shaun Cassidy collages, and a mouthy best friend. At 40, Avery has become a visual artist, her rich and sensual Italian boyfriend clearly instrumental in helping her find the self-acceptance that eluded her for so long. This wildly vivid novel unfolds, zigzagging between Avery’s past and present and exploring all the ways in which one continues to both haunt and electrify the other. Johnson, a California native and professor of English at the University of Southern California, introduced Avery in her Flannery O’Connor Award–winning story collection, Break Any Woman Down. In this debut novel, Johnson brilliantly knits the dual narratives together, maintaining a dynamic balance between nimble language and rowdy, vulnerable characters. The real achievement is the honest, compassionate, and unflinching willingness to honor teenage struggles for identity, confidence, and love while listening to Led Zeppelin and rooting for the Dodgers. A prologue that feels forced is instantly rendered unnecessary by the surefire language that explodes with chapter one. Agent: Rosalie Siegel.

June 15, 2012
When her father's passion for a better life moved the family from Los Angeles' 80th Street to West Covina, Avery Arlington liked the suburb's "promised stellar living." Now she's not so sure. Avery, once in suburbia, disconnects, pulled toward angst and rebellion by her new best friend, Brenna, yet ensnared by the hard-line rules of her uber-strict parents. Brenna is white, Avery African-American. Also in the mix: Avery's cousin, Keith, flitting between Avery's home and his single mother's house in Victorville--and between trouble and rebellion. The story shifts between Avery's childhood, descriptions and dialogue redolent of the rural south and of the 'hood, and the present day. Adult Avery lives in a Schnabel house wannabe in the moneyed hills of West Los Angeles. Avery graduated from USC--Johnson's comprehension of poor girl among the rich is superb--and satisfied her parents' ambitions. Soon after, she met and moved in with Massimo, an Italian immigrant and successful attorney. Avery holds a business degree, but her passion is art, both painting and collage, metaphorically symbolic of her self-constructed life, "putting together all my pieces of discarded things." As much as Avery's art represents the self she constructed, the shadow of Keith, thief and drug addict, hanging over and haunting her life, represents the oppression of choice, success and failure. Johnson's novel speaks to race, class and culture; white, black, Hispanic and immigrant; the world as it is, and as it should be. Meditative literary fiction, a near-dream-state reflection on the duality of life.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.