Rating: 
Summary: Weak
Review: A firsthand account of a fictitious author, Beckett, as she discovers womanhood.The story is written in a spare and sensual style, content descending into a dreamstate which might be compelling if it weren't so absurd. The book is not without it's charms; what some have identified as over-written seemed romantic to this reader. The prose quietly arranges small tableaus and ends them abruptly with stark and occasionally powerful results. The dialog is compellingly teenaged, sometimes even 'cute'. The second half of the novel becomes decreasingly sane, although the author's Beckett pleads with us to take the events depicted as fact. I would like to believe that Mendelsohn wants readers to dismiss Beckett's ravings as deluded by a society gone terribly wrong. But it's hard to know for sure, and this becomes the book's ultimate downfall. The events leading up to the final scene are so embarrassingly absurd that I found myself cringing with the same sort of sympathetic humiliation one feels when they see a close friend make an idiot of herself in public. During the middle chapters, you wonder if at any moment the prose will snap suddenly into lucid focus and be explained rationally; During final ones, you wish it would. Momentary lapses into sanity are all the reader actually gets. A disappointing read.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor, poor Beckett
Review: And I thought I had it bad when I was in high school. Poor Beckett is dealing with a new school, getting her period, her father's involvement with the school nurse, her boyfriend, the "in crowd" suicide pacts, witchcraft and the internet. And on top of that, the poor girl gives the reader the idea that she must be dropping some serious acid with all of these crazy dreams she has. Beckett can be saved. All she needs is a big bottle of prozac and a mallet.
Rating: 
Summary: Have we forgotten how to read? Allegorical brilliance!
Review: As a fan of the author's first, widely (mis-)read book, I was so looking forward to her next effort, hoping she would take her lyrical imagination and gifts for lucid prose to new heights. I have never been more shocked. Rather than soaring even higher than Amelia, this book plumbs a kind of literary depth that you won't often find outside Dante. If Amelia was a dream, this one's a nightmare. If Stephen King and Virginia Woolf mated, the result would be this wild, wonderful, brilliant book. I admit, I was put off by some of the negative reviews (oh me of little faith) that the back-biting, presumably jealous journalism types have doled out to this dark little gem, but what gets me is that no one seems to be reading the book on its own terms - as allegory - as fable - as metaphor. Beckett herself (the narrator, a wonderful, sassy, smart girl, and how glad I am that my own girls will grow up with such a heroine, as I did with Holden Caulfield) tells us, again and again - it doesn't matter if something is real. What matters is if it's true. Well this book is like a brace of cold truth on all of our faces - about youth, about the culture, about the country - and it's also as entertaining as can be. Bravo, Mendelsohn! You've done it again....and once again, the people seem to be missing it (although I've actually read quite a few great reviews around the country on line - maybe the New Yorkers are simply too jealous of your first book's success to know how to read this book for the allegory it is - but that doesn't excuse my fellow Amazonians, who usually read with such distinction....) Before writing this, I went back and reread my own review of I Was Amelia Earhart, and everything I said there is even truer of Inocence: Mendelsohn's writing remains positively entrancing, "a compelling hybrid of Hemingway, Garcia Marquez, and Virgina Woolf." And as with Amelia, I'm suprised by how few "picked up on the book's exquisite irony, its dry wit, its utterly deadpan sense of humor." My final comment may need some amending: I wrote that "I have a feeling that her next book will more clearly establish Mendelsohn for what she is -- the writer of her generation." Well, Innocence definitely confirms that in my mind, but if the reviewers, professional and otherwise, continue their campaign of idiocy, we may have to wait for her next book for the rest of the country to catch up with the plain unvarnished truth: she's the best we have, a heavyweight like very few others writing today.
Rating:
Summary: A Bit Too Pretentious For My Taste
Review: Having just finished Jane Mendelsohn's "Innocence", I must say that I am sadly disappointed. On the recommendation of a friend, I expected a ferocious social satire, a commentary on the teenage obsession with media and pop culture. I was instead treated to a very poor approximation of "Catcher in the Rye", mixed with a bit of "The Bell Jar" and far too much "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" style vampire paranoia. The novel centers on the self-absorbed teenage girl Beckett, with whom we are clearly intended to sympathize. However, instead of understanding Beckett, I was continually disgusted with her. I never for a moment believed that her delusions were real; I was completely shocked in the end when Beckett is NOT confined to a mental institution. The reader is expected to take her ridiculous explanations of "truth" as some sort of enlightened reality. Instead, I was confused and depressed. Teenage suicide is seemingly played as a cliched plot device, never dealt with as a bleak reality. Though Mendelsohn peppers her unbelievable, undeveloped story with some poetic descriptions of New York City nightlife, the whole is a painfully strained gothic parody. Don't expect a well-thought out and beautiful allegory; this was, in my opinion, very little more than glorified pulp.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book
Review: I adored this book, but I think it was mis-marketed. It should have been published as a Young Adult book for older teens, because it's absolutely perfect for that age group. (And for those of us adults who still enjoy YA fiction, at least when it's this beautifully written). It reminded me of Francesca Lia Block's "urban fantasy" fiction, but set in New York rather than in Block's stomping ground of LA. Yet it's better written than Block (who veers wildly from the sublime to facile), and far more memorable. I just hope this book can find its way into the hands of bright teens who like Block's fiction, Charles de Lint's, or Alice Hoffman's. It's a wonderful read.
Rating:
Summary: Read this with your heart, not your mind!
Review: I began reading "Innocence" and after the first 30 pages or so, I was trying to reconcile in my mind whether or not the storyline was a dream. So....I started over and began reading this book again, WITHOUT my intellectual predilection to examine and "prove" every detail in a novel. That's the whole point of this novel, as "Beckett" the main character herself mentions several times, that her view is not believed by those around her. She is a teenager who has recently lost her mother in an accident and is facing womanhood, moving to a new school, where she doesn't fit in, dealing with her father's new romance with the school nurse. The actual events of the novel, while I never had a strong feel for whether or not they were real, as Beckett says, were "true." I think that this novel is as another reviewer said, mostly allegorical, and that the entire point is to look through the eyes of Beckett, as she struggles to process momentous changes in her life. After I read the book [in one sitting, by the way] and closed the cover, my thoughts were just as Beckett said...It doesn't matter if it was real, it was true... This book is not for everyone, I will concede that point. It is filled with so much imagery and the fantastical thoughts of a teenage girl in turmoil that it is impossible to tell which parts are truly supposed to be real. But after reading it, well, it doesn't really matter. I was entertained, and concerned, because I agree that there is great disolutionment in our youth. This book points that out so well.
Rating:
Summary: Read this with your heart, not your mind!
Review: I began reading "Innocence" and after the first 30 pages or so, I was trying to reconcile in my mind whether or not the storyline was a dream. So....I started over and began reading this book again, WITHOUT my intellectual predilection to examine and "prove" every detail in a novel. That's the whole point of this novel, as "Beckett" the main character herself mentions several times, that her view is not believed by those around her. She is a teenager who has recently lost her mother in an accident and is facing womanhood, moving to a new school, where she doesn't fit in, dealing with her father's new romance with the school nurse. The actual events of the novel, while I never had a strong feel for whether or not they were real, as Beckett says, were "true." I think that this novel is as another reviewer said, mostly allegorical, and that the entire point is to look through the eyes of Beckett, as she struggles to process momentous changes in her life. After I read the book [in one sitting, by the way] and closed the cover, my thoughts were just as Beckett said...It doesn't matter if it was real, it was true... This book is not for everyone, I will concede that point. It is filled with so much imagery and the fantastical thoughts of a teenage girl in turmoil that it is impossible to tell which parts are truly supposed to be real. But after reading it, well, it doesn't really matter. I was entertained, and concerned, because I agree that there is great disolutionment in our youth. This book points that out so well.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding and colorful!
Review: I began reading this book late one night before bed and after what seemed like minutes turned into hours. I was mesmerized by the way the book was written, it pulled me in and kept me interested from one page to the next. I finished the book in 2 days! I have only found 3-books in my life that have entertained my imagination as this one did. I felt sad when it was done because I wanted to follow Beckett everywhere and learn about her life and how she deals with reality or non-reality! I could feel a sense of closeness to her. The words come alive and bounce off the pages, they fill your head with wonderful vivid pictures and scenes! I felt as if I were right there with her looking into the moment. I read a review by a young girl, 15 yrs old, who found the book to be outstanding as well...I am 30 and this book was just as good to me as to her. Absolutely colorful, creative, and I can't say enough great things about it... wonderfully written!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding and colorful!
Review: I began reading this book late one night before bed and after what seemed like minutes turned into hours. I was mesmerized by the way the book was written, it pulled me in and kept me interested from one page to the next. I finished the book in 2 days! I have only found 3-books in my life that have entertained my imagination as this one did. I felt sad when it was done because I wanted to follow Beckett everywhere and learn about her life and how she deals with reality or non-reality! I could feel a sense of closeness to her. The words come alive and bounce off the pages, they fill your head with wonderful vivid pictures and scenes! I felt as if I were right there with her looking into the moment. I read a review by a young girl, 15 yrs old, who found the book to be outstanding as well...I am 30 and this book was just as good to me as to her. Absolutely colorful, creative, and I can't say enough great things about it... wonderfully written!
Rating:
Summary: This book was amazing!
Review: I bought this book because I needed something to read, and the back intrigued me. I could not put this book down. I normally do not read anything along the lines of this genre, but I wanted to know what would occur next. Beckett reminds me of any new kid in a high school. I polished this book off in one day and passed it along to my friends. I thought that they would enjoy it. Each of them finished it within one day and had the same feelings as I did. My mother doesn't share my sentiments, but maybe this book is just intended for people who have recently been in high school and other generations won't follow it. But it is an excellent book and I urge anyone to read it.
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