This is the story of Cyd Charisse, a caustic teen who’s been kicked out of boarding school, and sent back home to live with her mother and stepfather in San Francisco.
I wasn’t crazy about Cyd at first. She seemed like a brat, stomping around her parent’s home, but she grew on me. Her relationships with her surfer boyfriend Shrimp and her elderly gal pal were touching. I felt bad for her when she was grounded, and Shrimp told her they needed to take a break.
When Cyd’s mother ships her off to New York City to spend the summer with her biological dad, Cyd gets a major wakeup call. Her preppy half-sibling lisBETH isn’t happy to see her, and her father refers to her as his niece in public. Cyd’s dreams about a happy reunion are crushed, but she’s whip-smart (though anti-college), and honest about her abortion. I liked her in-your-face fashion sense and her attachment to her rag doll, Gingerbread.
Favorite Cyd-isms:
On money— “I hate it when adults revert to that topic. It’s so ugly.”
On family— “ … as we strolled, not walking close like chums, but at a slight distance from each other as, I suppose, wayward dads and their love children are wont to do.”
On pervs— “The whole flight he had been pretending not to stare at Gingerbread, who had been sitting on my black tights, right below my short skirt, during the flight.”
On justice— “I was the wrong party, not the wronged party.”
On herself— “I was a whore for popularity then …”
In closing, Cohn’s writing has a lot of style. The characters are likeable, quirky and human. I would recommend this book to any teen who liked Weetzie Bat, or the movie Juno.
Click to buy this book: Gingerbread
Question: Has anyone else read this book? What did you think?
Currently reading: The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld
it is a great book i have read it 5 times and it is so cool
I read this book years ago when I was in Sacto and I must say, it is really just a bad Francesca Lia Block rip off. It just tries way to hard. I didn’t dig it at all. The better YA coming of age would be The Orpheus Obsession by Dakota Lane.