Life In Miniature

October 4, 2010
In Schlossberg's eloquent debut, Adie, a wistful girl comes uneasily of age in 1980s California. Adie lives with Miriam, her older sister, and Mindy, their single mother, who has a nervous breakdown. Afterwards, it's like living at the epicenter of a continual earthquake as they, fueled by Mindy's instability and paranoia, embark on a near-nomadic existence. Enhanced by Adie's plucky perspective (on keeping family secrets: "If someone brings that up, just change the subject") and her close relationship with Miriam, the tale intensifies further when Miriam runs away with her boyfriend, leading Adie to an illuminating journey of discovery. With its echoes of Mona Simpson's Anywhere but Here, this is a solid beginning for Schlossberg; nuanced, moving, and surely a cut above the standard coming-of-age.

November 15, 2010
Adie is the smallest girl in her sixth-grade class, a fact that makes her something of an outsider. But what really brands her as different is her single-parent mother, who is obsessed with Californias drug culture of the 1980s, the milieu in which the story is set. The obsession grows into full-blown paranoia when mom starts to believe she is being stalked by drug dealers and, pulling Adie out of school, takes to the road. The two nomads begin living in motels where, Adie thinks, everything is scaled down, a smaller version of itself. Schlossbergs first novel is told from Adies point of view and in her first person voice, which means that the girl, unlike the adults they encounter, fails to understand much of what is happening. Yet the mothers mental illness is so blatant that one wonders why no one intervenes and, the mother having quit her job, where the money comes from to support their flight. Despite these improbabilities, the book is inarguably well-written, and Adie becomes a fully realized character whose plight never fails to engage the reader.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)