Mannequin Girl

A Novel

De: Ellen Litman

Narrado por: Elizabeth Evans

A heartfelt and deftly told coming-of-age story, Mannequin Girl captures the bleakness of Soviet Russia and the hopeful turmoil of adolescence.

"A perfect little figure," he says. "Our mannequin girl." She knows who mannequin girls are. They are in her grandmother's Working Woman magazines, modeling flouncy dresses and berets. "Bend," he tells her, and she does, so pliant, so obedient.

Growing up in Soviet Russia, Kat Knopman worships her parents, temperamental Anechka and soft-hearted, absent-minded Misha. Young Jewish intellectuals, they teach literature at a Moscow school, run a drama club, and dabble in political radicalism. Kat sees herself as their heir and ally. But when she's diagnosed with rapidly-progressing scoliosis, the trajectory of her life changes, and she finds herself at a different institution - a school-sanatorium for children with spinal ailments. Confined to a brace, surrounded by unsympathetic peers, Kat embarks on a quest to prove that she can be as exceptional as her parents: a beauty, an intellect, and free spirit despite her physical limitations, her Jewishness, and her suspicion that her beloved parents are in fact flawed.

Can a girl with a crooked spine really be a mannequin girl, her parents' pride and her doctors' and teachers' glory? Or will she prove to be something far more ordinary - and, thereby, more her own? An unforgettable heroine, Kat will have to find the courage to face the world and break free, not only of her metal brace but of all the constraints that bind her.

©2014 Ellen Litman (P)2014 Audible Inc.

I wanted to like this

Any additional comments?

I love Elizabeth Evans as a narrator. I even thought I would like this novel as it started with a haunting quote I won't soon forget...
Unfortunately, I kept picking it up and putting it down, and almost dreaded keeping going back to it. It seems to meander through time and space, constantly in present tense.
I wanted to like this... the writing is literary quality, but something was missing - maybe urgency, maybe anything remotely happy...