Mannequin Girl (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780393069280)

"A perfect little figure," he says. "Our mannequin girl." She knows who mannequin girls are. They are in her grandmother's Working Woman magazines, modeling flouncy dresses and berets. "Bend," he tells her, and she does, so pliant, so obedient."

Growing up in Soviet Russia, Kat Knopman worships her parents, temperamental Anechka and soft-hearted, absent-minded Misha. Young Jewish intellectuals, they teach literature at a Moscow school, run a drama club, and dabble in political radicalism. Kat sees herself as their heir and ally. But when she's diagnosed with rapidly-progressing scoliosis, the trajectory of her life changes and she finds herself at a different institution--a school-sanatorium for children with spinal ailments. Confined to a brace, surrounded by unsympathetic peers, Kat embarks on a quest to prove that she can be as exceptional as her parents: a beauty, an intellect, and free spirit despite her physical limitations, her Jewishness, and her suspicion that her beloved parents are in fact flawed. Can a girl with a crooked spine really be a mannequin girl, her parents' pride and her doctors' and teachers' glory? Or will she prove to be something far more ordinary--and, thereby, more her own? An unforgettable heroine, Kat will have to find the courage to face the world and break free not only of her metal brace but of all the constraints that bind her.

Author: Ellen Litman
ISBN-10: 0393069281
ISBN-13: 9780393069280
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Language: English
Published: 03/17/2014
Pages: 352
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.86lbs
Size: 8.56h x 5.84w x 1.15d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 12/16/2013
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/2014
Library Journal 03/01/2014 pg. 84
Booklist 03/01/2014 pg. 17
People Weekly 04/07/2014 pg. 55
BookPage 03/01/2014