Review: Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress by Maria Padian

Meet Brett McCarthy: best eighth-grade corner kicker in Maine, vocabulary ace, best friend to Diane.

Until the prank.

Overnight she’s become: a loser at school, archenemy to Jeanne Anne (it’s all Jeanne Anne’s fault, anyway), and a juvenile delinquent who has to eat lunch with the principal every day.  Indefinitely.

Now Brett’s got to figure out how to get through her days right when everything and everyone—including her other best friend, Michael the Brainiac, and her bazooka-blasting grandmother, Nonna—is changing and nothing is staying the same.

And here we have another book that takes place in Maine.  I believe I mentioned on Girl Unmoored how thankful I am for books that take place in Maine; they’re rare, especially in the young-adult range.  Where it counted, Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress was a pretty good book; it was paced well, the writing style wasn’t too murky or simple, and there wasn’t any one part of the book that made me just want to put it down or read one of the other books on my reading list.

It’s also pretty creative; the characters themselves are interesting, especially Brett’s grandmother, “Nonna.” My favorite parts of the book were the ones that focused on her, such as the huge garage sale she has every year, or Nonna’s birthday party, where instead of having people bring presents, she has them bring something (or a symbol of something) they want to get rid of, and Nonna’s friend Mr. Beady would blast them out of a potato bazooka.  There are often extremely creative things in books that I sit back and think: I’d never think of that.  It kind of makes me sad for my own creativity as a writer.

It did, of course, have its faults.  There were little things, such as Diane’s little brother having a “ring of orange” around his mouth from eating what isn’t named but is obviously Goldfish crackers; I’m a veteran of the snack and would like to assure Ms. Padian that they are nowhere near as messy as cheese puffs.  It also shares a fault with Girl Unmoored, in that it mentions the fact that the characters live in Maine every chance it gets.  I’m thankful for Maine-based books, but do authors who write them really have to slap it in your face so much?

The biggest fault in my eyes would probably be the stereotypes.  It uses a LOT of stereotypes of people who live in Maine, and I have to say it was annoying.  Thinking back on it, it’s not really clear if it was unintentional or if Ms. Padian did it on purpose to show how naïve Brett is, but it still worked against the book.  The “stereotypical Maine accent” is extremely uncommon unless you’re old or live in the northern part of the state, for instance (Brett’s town is a short drive from Portland).  No one I know describes someone from out of state as “from away,” either, and you’re no more likely to find a girl who can take apart a chainsaw than any other heavily woods-covered state (I certainly can’t, and I don’t remember a single female friend over the years with that particular talent).  Of course there was also the mention of how “everyone can drive a snowmobile” especially “in the northern part of the state, where you need it to get groceries in the dead of winter” to paraphrase the book.

Come on, Ms. Padian.  Northern Maine is no worse than Canada.  Do you think Canadians are speeding through their rural towns with bags of groceries on the back of their ATVs because there are so few roads that can be cleared?  My stepfather spends hours every winter plowing people out of their driveways.  It’s a simple and common, if time-consuming, task.

But I digress.  Despite the stereotypes, which probably seem more offensive to me considering I live in this state, it is a book worth reading, in my opinion.  So happy reading.