Looking for the perfect beach read this summer? You’re in luck. Just in time for pool and beach season comes “Mary Jane” (Custom House), the latest literary offering from former Baltimore resident Jessica Anya Blau.
The novel, slated to be released May 11, was lauded as a “charming and poignant tale of desire, image, Americana, and chosen family” by the American Library Association’s Booklist magazine.
“Mary Jane,” which takes place in Baltimore during the mid-1970s, tells the story of a summer in the life of Mary Jane Dillard, a 14-year-old girl from a conservative Roland Park family.
Mary Jane gets a summer job as a nanny for the unconventional and half-Jewish Cone family. Her experiences in the Cone household change the way she views herself, her family and the world at large.
Blau — the author of the best-seller “The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (HarperCollins), the critically acclaimed “Drinking Closer to Home” (HarperCollins) and most recently, “The Trouble with Lexie” (Harper Perennial) — now lives in New York.
A Boston native who grew up in Southern California, Blau spoke with Jmore about “Mary Jane,” her writing career and why she loves Charm City.
Jmore: Did you always know you would become a novelist?
JAB: No, I really didn’t think about it. I was always a reader and I read constantly, and I was always keeping journals. I was constantly looking at my life and looking at people, and looking at everything and then writing about it. So this was always happening.
When I moved to Canada in the 1990s with my then-husband and I didn’t have a work permit and I wasn’t allowed to go to school, I just started writing every day. I started doing it almost without thinking about it. But I felt really productive when I did it, and I felt happy.
What was the first thing you got published?
So when I was in Canada, there was one short story [she wrote] that didn’t seem terrible. And I wondered if anybody would ever want to read this short story. And so I sent it out to one magazine and it got published.
And I was so shocked. I just couldn’t believe that somebody wanted to publish it, but they did. And that’s when I applied to graduate school [at Johns Hopkins University, where she earned a master’s degree in fiction writing].
Where do you get the ideas for your novels?
Mostly just from my life and people like me. I mean, it’s just the world is so weird and people are so strange.
“The Naked Swim Parties” was loosely based on my life. And then “Drinking Closer to Home” was pretty much autobiography, veiled fiction. For “Wonder Bread Summer,” I was thinking about when I was at [the University of California] Berkeley and all the interesting people and all the eccentric characters I met at Berkeley.
What about “Mary Jane”?
There’s two households in [the book]. There’s one that’s very strict, conservative, clean, tidy house. And then there’s the chaotic Cone house with the ridiculous grotesqueness in the refrigerator. Yeah, and the Cone house is my house growing up, and the other house is like my best friend’s house.
I just took these two houses and these two ways of living in the world and viewing the world. And you know, one of my daughters read ‘Mary Jane’ and she said, ‘Mom, she’s you. She’s exactly you.’ I wasn’t doing what [Mary Jane] was doing at 14. I was on the beach in Santa Barbara. But internally, it’s just my way of seeing the world or something.
Literary influences?
Oh, you know, Anne Tyler and Nick Hornby. I mean, I read everybody but I don’t read fantasy, and I don’t read too much sci-fi but I’ve certainly read a little bit. I like historical fiction. I like nonfiction. I like memoirs. I like literary fiction.
What was it like to write about Baltimore?
I do love Baltimore. I mean, of course, there are problems in Baltimore. There are undeniable problems. But it’s such a beautiful, amazing place with so many interesting people. There’s so much love for Baltimore, and hopefully that comes out in the book.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a novel that takes place partly in Baltimore and partly in Toronto. So yes, we’ve got Baltimore again.
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