Baby Love

The death of J. D. Salinger seems a good occasion to write about Joyce Maynard’s Baby Love (PS3563 .A9638 B3 1981). Joyce Maynard doesn’t get the respect she deserves, perhaps because she published her first book, a memoir, when she was 20. Or maybe it’s because she doesn’t shy away from sensational subjects: To Die For fictionalizes the Pamela Smart story.

Baby Love is the story of four teenaged friends--three single mothers and a fourth who hopes to become one. There are plenty of other characters as well: an escapee from an institution for the criminally insane, and the equally insane—and not entirely less criminal--grandmother of one of the babies. One of the young mothers, Tara, perhaps the most likeable character of the novel, contemplates running off with a birthing cult. The cult members may also be insane, but they’re so much better than Tara’s actual family that we can only root for her to move on in with them.

The escapee from the detention center has his eye on one of the characters. There’s a tragedy.

And yet this book is neither a Mary Higgins Clark-type thriller nor an instance of hard-edge naturalism: it’s humor from start to finish. One reason is because we’re clearly never meant to identify with the characters; they’re all too broadly drawn to be real.

Here, for example, is what the crazed grandmother takes with her on a planned trip from New Hampshire to Disney World:

There are Mrs. Ramsay’s TV and a twelve-volume set of the Golden How and Why Encyclopedia. There are two African violet plants and a pressure cooker, a plaster cast of the Praying Hands, a beach umbrella, Mrs. Ramsay’s Barbie Doll collection (one is the 1962 version, with a bubble cut and the Dinner at Eight evening gown). There is a framed photograph of Mrs. Ramsay’s son Dwight in his Cub Scout uniform, an autographed copy of Lawrence Welk’s autobiography, Wunnerful, Wunnerful, four boxes of 20 Mule Team Borax. The reason for that is they don’t make Borax the way they used to anymore, back when Ronald Reagan was the host of Death Valley Days. Mrs. Ramsay happens to know they mix in chalk dust now. She found out just before they started doing it, so she bought enough of the old kind to last her.

If you enjoy a little tastelessness in your humor, Baby Love is absolutely worth your time.