Roberta Israeloff

I'm almost embarrassed to admit I read this book. Because Roberta Israeloff's LOST AND FOUND is all about the particular agonies of being a thirteen year-old girl, and an overachieving one at that. And I'm a guy, and an old guy. But I have to tell you, I was drawn into Israeloff's story from the very start. Maybe it's because I knew girls like her when I was a teenager. I admired these girls tremendously for their determination, for their inquisitive minds, for their scholastic achievements and all that. But when I was that age, there were all those hormones, you know? So I never would have dreamed of asking any of those girls out. And therein lies much of the crux of Israeloff's story - about the confusion in her own mind of what she should be like at thirteen. Should she be more interested in boys than she actually was? Because she watched her closest friends begin to go in that direction, obsessed with boys, with being popular, with being 'sexy,' etc. But she was a late bloomer, and just couldn't make herself interested in those things. So, despite all of her school prizes, top grades and other achievements, she was miserable a lot of the time. Sad that she didn't seem to be as close as she used to be with her dad, who she suspected really wanted a son, which is why she was named Roberta. And she knew vaguely that she didn't want a life like her mother's, an endless round of cooking, cleaning, shopping and mundane social activities. She had vague dreams of going into medicine or archaeology, but wasn't quite sure how that would happen.

But it was her descriptions of the basement rec-room necking parties that got to me the most. She always was the un-paired girl, wishing someone would dance with her. Yearning vaguely for a necking partner, but not quite able to imagine liking it. Guess what? Guys think about stuff like that too, but they're ways of expressing it are a lot cruder. Which is why, at thirteen, Israeloff was so confused and put off by the small cruelties and crudeness of the boys in her crowd.

Israeloff's portrait of the tracking system of junior high in early sixties Long Island is detailed and fascinating. But her diary entries from that year - her eighth grade in a new school after moving from Queens to the suburbs - are at the heart of the narrative. Her commentary on these diary entries, looking back thirty years later, told me a lot about the misery of being a girl. I already knew plenty about the misery of being a pimply thirteen year-old boy, but now I feel like I understand how it was for the girls. Roberta Israeloff is a very good writer, good enough that I felt for her thirteen year-old self. I'm sure plenty of women would enjoy this book and relate to it, but I would not hesitate to recommend it to men. I wish I'd had it to read twenty-some years ago, when my own daughter was thirteen, and going through her own teenage hell. But maybe better late than never. Thanks, Roberta, for telling your story - and for the commentary from the vantage point of decades later. This is a book that should be on the recommended reading list for Women's Studies.… (mehr)