Swanna in Love
A Novel
by Jennifer Belle
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Pub Date Jan 30 2024 | Archive Date Dec 31 2023
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Description
Best-selling author Belle (High Maintenance, Going Down) unleashes her first new novel in over ten years
It's the summer of 1982 and fourteen-year-old Swanna Swain is the only one left at camp. The place is a ghost town by the time her mother Val finally shows up six hours late—stoned and radiant—in a Ford pickup driven by Borislav, her new young Russian lover. Assuming she is headed home to her air-conditioned Upper West Side apartment, Swanna and her lovable younger brother Madding are instead dragged to Vermont—to an artist colony where kids are not welcome and they are forced to sleep in the back of the truck, while Val is cozy inside the house with the Russian.
Then Swanna meets Dennis, a handsome married father of two, at a bowling alley, and, knowing a thing or two about seduction from Judy Blume, her best friend at camp, and her own parents’ many affairs—she sets out to convince Dennis to help her. But love seldom obeys rules, and even a tough, smart, city girl like Swanna might not be able to handle falling in love.
Best-selling novelist Jennifer Belle returns with a kind of inverse Lolita that explores adolescent desire from the girl’s point of view. In turns hilarious and wildly shocking, Swanna in Love will keep your feathers ruffled and the pages gliding by.
About the Author: Jennifer Belle is the best-selling author of four novels, Going Down (which was named best debut novel by Entertainment Weekly and optioned for the screen twenty-seven times), High Maintenance, Little Stalker, The Seven Year Bitch, and Animal Stackers, a picture book for children (illustrated by David McPhail). Her stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Independent (London), Harper's Bazaar, Ms., BlackBook, the New York Observer, Post Road, and many anthologies.
A Note From the Publisher
LibraryReads votes due by 12/1/23.
Advance Praise
"Swanna in Love is an addictive read, a book as genuinely funny as it is transgressive. Jennifer Belle captures the bravado and vulnerability of adolescence in a voice that jumps off the first page and ventures into some dangerous territory." - Tom Perrotta, author of Tracy Flick Can’t Win
"Oh, how I loved the whip-smart Swanna Swain. I loved the way she effortlessly lied to people. I love how much she wanted things, good and bad. With Swanna in Love, Jennifer Belle has given us the other side of Nabokov's Lolita—the misunderstood teenage temptress who desperately wants an ice cream sandwich, a comfortable bed to sleep in. Love. Sometimes, it hurts what happens to her. I inhaled this book." - Marcy Dermansky, author of Hurricane Girl
"Only Jennifer Belle could write a character like the utterly original and hilariously fierce Swanna, who navigates her way out of the benign neglect of an eighties New York City post-divorce childhood with her beloved brother in tow—a lifetime of growth and change—in the course of a summer. Swanna in Love is a coming-of-age novel unlike anything I’ve ever read—beautiful, funny, and heartbreakingly true. I loved, and believed, every word of it." - Laura Zigman, author of Small World
"Utterly delightful. By turns deeply funny and profoundly moving. The most pitch-perfect portrait of adolescence since The Catcher in the Rye. I loved this novel so!" - Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781636141640 |
| PRICE | $16.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 288 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Bookseller 684407
I really enjoyed this book. It was very funny but also very moving. I think I fell in love with Swanna! I expected this to be somewhat salacious, like Lolita, but instead found it to be a very relatable coming-of-age story. I will definitely be recommending this book. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Jennifer M, Reviewer
I received an advance copy from #netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Jennifer Belle is finally back!!!! Her prior novel, The Seven Year Bitch, came out in 2010, so that’s almost 14 years. This one is classic Jennifer Belle, with her signature deadpan screwball humor. It’s about a 14-year-old girl’s sexual relationship with a 37-year-old man, which in today’s cultural climate might seem impossible to write about in a humorous way, but JB pulls it off. Headstrong 14-year-old Swanna is devastated by her parents’ neglect and impending divorce as she pursues a relationship with this married dad. As in Belle’s previous novels, the humor in Swanna in Love overlays a dark sadness, and only makes the sadness feel more real.
Librarian 1080666
I recently read Swanna in Love by Jennifer Belle, and it was a fascinating and thought-provoking read that left me with mixed feelings. The story is about Swanna Swain, a fourteen-year-old girl who finds herself dragged to an artist colony in Vermont by her stoned and radiant mother, Val and her new Russian lover Borislav. Swanna and her younger brother, Madding, are forced to sleep in the back of the truck while Val is cozy inside the house with the Russian. However, things take an unexpected turn when Swanna meets Dennis, a handsome married father of two, at a bowling alley, and sets out to seduce him.
The book explores adolescent desire from a girl's point of view and is in some ways an inverse Lolita. The author has done an excellent job of creating relatable characters that are easy to connect with. Swanna's struggles with her complicated family situation and her desire for a man who is off-limits are something that many readers will be able to relate to.
Swanna in Love is a well-written and engaging book that will keep you hooked until the end. The plot is well-crafted, and the pacing is perfect. The book is both hilarious and wildly shocking, which makes for a fascinating and thought-provoking read.
Overall, I highly recommend Swanna in Love to anyone who loves a good coming-of-age story. It's a well-written and thought-provoking book that explores adolescent desire and the complexities of family relationships. The characters are well-developed, and the plot is engaging, making it a perfect read for anyone looking for a book that will make them think and feel.
Christina L, Reviewer
I have loved Jennifer Belle since Going Down and High Maintenance, so I was dying to read this book, and it did not disappoint. Belle has a unique, quirky, laugh out loud sense of humor, and so do her narrators. In this case, the titular character Swanna is a 15-year-old child who is witty and wise beyond her years.... but still just a young teenager without present parents. So one summer, at an artists' colony she was dragged to as an afterthought by her kooky mother and her weird new boyfriend, Swanna enters into a romantic relationship with an adult man -- a father of kids, a doctor, and a dude who should certainly know better than to have sex with a child.
We hear the relationship from Swanna's painfully youthful, Comsmoplotan-magazine reading perspective. The subject matter is of course controversial but handled delicately and sensitively as we follow Swanna's desire to be loved and parented, when all the adults in her life have totally checked out on her. We also see her suitor, the adult man, grow from the romanticized boyfriend figure she first sees (which of course we doubt, knowing his age) into the total creep he actually is, but all with much more nuance and sensitivity than you can imagine.
This book won't be for everyone but it was definitely for me, with all the humor, sensitivity and wisdom of Belle's previous books, and like all her other books, it will break your heart a little, especially the ending.
I love everything Jennifer Belle writes and I can't wait for her next effort. 5🌟s to this always unique and hilarious voice.
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