Novel explores teen-age
issues
 By
Megan Finnerty
Features Editor
Beckett, the main character in Jane Mendelsohn's
second novel, "Innocence," really is as messed up as she thinks she
is.
Her stepmother is stealing her used tampons and
using them to brew tea for her vampirish clutch of friends.
Her stepmother did club her boyfriend over the
head with a bottle of Heinz 57, putting him into a coma.
A cloud of bats is following her around, flapping
and humming just beyond her perception.
Following the success of her comparatively mellow
first novel, "I Was Amelia Earhart," Mendelsohn has thrown off her original
narrative voice and plunged into the tortured psyche of a teenager dealing
with her mother's death and her new womanhood.
But the book isn't just about mild gore, murdered
virgins left in alleys and evil conspiracies.
It is about the problems of teens, especially girls,
dealing with mortality, sexuality, popularity and a sense of otherness.
Beckett sees herself as the "Final Girl."
 The
Final Girl is the one who is left until the end of the killing spree,
who sees the horror, but doesn't know how to stop it. So she screams
and screams as she runs and falls, narrowly escaping the slice of the
ax.
The book contains intelligent introspection and
teen-age "issues," but there's no hypersensitive "Dawson's Creek" self-examination.
The landscape of the book seems suspended in the Jell-O of time. It's
organized in chronological order, but dreams, flashbacks and a truth
that often reads like projected fears and fantasies give the story a
dreamy quality similar to a mix between "Interview with the Vampire"
and "The Virgin Suicides."
Part of the book's lure is how it is wholly unlike
"I Was Amelia Earhart," a softer story about the afterlife of one of
Purdue's most famous graduates. The long book was lauded by critics
and was commercially successful. Yet with "Innocence," Mendelsohn didn't
play into the expectations of her guaranteed audience.
This short book is a scathing and dark social commentary
on America's teens today. But if you are one of those teens, or were
one not too long ago, it's also a chance to have all your fears, dark
musings and confusions validated.
Like Beckett said, "This is all true. All of this
happened."
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