Anna Shapiro, Living on Air

Living on Air

Anna Shapiro

Soho, May 2006, $22.00

ISBN 1569474311

Maude Pugh was raised in Levittown, Long Island. By the time she attended high school, she concluded her parents were colossal failures who hid in a community in which all exterior houses were identical to one another. This she realizes enables them to act eccentric inside their home, but provide a veneer of respectability belonging outside.

Her father, the artist Milt, has a fan club of one, himself. To better display his colorful work, every room in the house is painted black as night to provide the proper background. Her mother Nina feels inferior to everyone, the wealthier upscale neighbors, her spouse and even Maude. Her older brother Seth is a classic loser who fits right at home with the family of failures that reside in the Pugh residence; that explains why he ran way when he turned sixteen. Still Maude has dreams of truly making it in the art world, and they seem to be occurring when she wins a scholarship to the prestigious Bay Farm prep school, but she only finds conformance and betrayal there, even as her peers salivate over her being a bohemian artist's daughter; just like at home.

This is an interesting look at social class and family politics through the eyes of an acute teen who knows her parents and sibling are losers in life, yet they are the reason she is part of the in crowd. Maude is a fascinating protagonist who wants desperately to break the cycle, but hits glass ceilings from so-called friends, especially a boyfriend. Fans of deep character studies inside the dynamics of a family drama will enjoy Maude's at times maudlin tale.