Dear Diary

"This highly original novel Dear Diary, is a marriage of The World of Henry Orient and Catcher in the Rye as a chronicle of a school girl's natural curiosity as she is drawn to the homeless on the upper West Side. The scenes and people are vividly portrayed, like photos shot with a lens that captures the secret innocence in children and in many of those who have found themselves living off the grid. Poet/author Rochelle Ratner spent a number of years observing and photographing West Side street life. She is also one of those rare American writers who can view the world convincingly through the eyes of a teenager and what he/she finds there. The obvious comparisons come to mind, Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield and Scout. Ratner has been here before with her first critically acclaimed novel, Bobby's Girl, in which a girl in the Atlantic City of the 50s shores up her impoverished life by imagining herself Bobby Rydell's girlfriend. Here, her young girl moves into the world rather than away from it. The effect is utterly contemporary, but unexpectedly charming; there is a cutting edge, but also compassion. In sensibility, it has much in common with a Wes Anderson movie. Dear Diary is a sleeper of a story that will keep you wide awake." Paul Pines