Mermaids - Softcover

"This is a really funny book about people trying to find something to hang onto in a world that keeps shifting under their feet. Patty Dann guides us through the guerilla war between mother and daughter, through the minefields that lie between being a child and being an adult in a voice not like any we've heard before."
- John Sayles

"Pure gold...energetic...frisky...a pleasure!"
- "Kirkus Reviews"

"Antic and poignant slice-of-coming-of-age-novel...a quirky charm will delight readers!"
- "ALA Booklist"

"Charming, fresh...sharply etched."
- "Publishers Weekly"

Mrs. Flax was happiest when she was leaving a place, but I wanted to stay put long enough to fall down crazy and hear the Word of God. I always called my mother Mrs. Flax.
So begins this extraordinary first novel about one wild year in the life of fourteen-year-old Charlotte Flax, when she and her sister Kate move with Mrs. Flax into a sleepy 1960's Massachusetts town. Mrs. Flax is a woman who wears polka-dot dresses and serves hors d'oeuvres for dinner every night, and Kate is a child who basically wants to be a fish.
And then there's Charlotte, who in Patty Dann's hands, is transformed into a young woman of infinite whim and variety. Charlotte's main ambition in life is to become a saint, preferably martyred, though she's Jewish. She's smitten with the shy young caretaker at the convent at the top of the hill. Dann has created a young girl who accepts the unkindness of the mad universe in which she's whirling and takes it on with a savage glee.
Charlotte Flax is like no one you have ever met--and someone you know very well.