Synopses & Reviews
Pixie Kitchy was once Miss New Jersey. Now she's married to a dentist, an ex-quarterback in turtled golf pants. Her ten-year-old daughter, Mitzie, wears Bo-peep pincurls and twirls baton. Her sixteen-year-old son, Ezra, the person who knows her best, is caught up in his fling with the podiatrist's daughter. And Pixie is consumed by the past. She confides, "I was a housewife, and I became dangerous. Sometimes it's the only way possible to regain footing in the world." In this high-wire mixture of absurdity and pathos, hilarity and darkness, one American family finds out that there is no such thing as the perfect American family, and, for better or for worse, they come together and start anew.
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"This second novel establishes Baggott's remarkable talent for creating characters who resonate with readers." Library Journal (Starred Review)
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"Baggott takes family dysfunction to a new level in a sophomore effort full of kookiness and calamity....Baggott explores contemporary 'civilized' behavior and the imperfections of a 'perfect American family' with wit and grace." Publishers Weekly
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"An accomplished and charmingly messy tale of love and redemption." Kirkus Reviews
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"Told in alternating chapters by Pixie and her 16-year-old son, Baggott's biting, darkly comedic, and brutally honest narrative takes a sardonic look at suburbia and family dysfunction." Carolyn Kubisz, Booklist
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"An emotional and darkly comic examination of growth, loss, secrets, and lies." USA Today
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"Julianna Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak, and that makes her a writer after my own heart." Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
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"With her first two novels, Julianna Baggott has achieved a premiere place among American writers. She knows us all so very well that each of her sentences lights up a corner of our privacies we might have thought darkly hidden. The Miss America Family is ruefully funny, cheerily sad, and wears its hard-worn wisdom lightly. What a treasure!" Fred Chappell, author of I Am One of You Forever and Look Back All the Green Valley
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"This is a stunningly written novel, lyrical and undeniable and relentlessly insightful about the love hiding within the oddities of family life. When focused through as fine a sensibility as Baggott's, the weight and absurdity of our everyday lives become far more beautiful than any Miss America. Smart, witty, and authentically touching, this is a story to be thankful for." Tom Coyne, author of A Gentleman's Game
About the Author
Julianna Baggott has contributed dozens of short stories and poems in such publications as Ms. Magazine, Poetry, and Best American Poetry 2000, as well as reading her work on NPR's Talk of the Nation. She is the author of the national bestselling novel Girl Talk and, forthcoming, The Madam, as well as a book of poems entitled This Country of Mothers. She lives in Delaware with her husband, the writer David G.W. Scott, and their three children.