JANE ANONYMOUS by LAURIE FARIA STOLARZ
A REVIEW BY ALEXA DUNCAN
I’ll let you in on a secret, dear readers: I’ve read Laurie Faria Stolarz’s books before. Her Blue Is For Nightmares series was a constant companion of mine throughout high school. It was about witches and mystery and all that good stuff. I’d read a few of Stolarz’s other books after the Blue series concluded, but I hadn’t seen much from her since then. Enter 2019’s Jane Anonymous.
In the same vein as her Blue series, Jane Anonymous is a YA thriller without the witchcraft. It is the story of our unnamed protagonist–she calls herself Jane–as we follow her on a journey from captivity to live back in the real world. Jane is just trying to get a birthday present for her best friend when she’s kidnapped by a man, stuffed inside the trunk of his car. When she wakes up, she finds herself alone in a room stocked with all her favorite things. Favorite clothes, favorite foods–anything Jane had in her life BSWM (before she went missing, has she refers to the period before her abduction). Readers navigate Jane’s understandably fractured mind throughout the novel,and eventually discover that some truths were never meant to be uncovered.
SPOILERS AHEAD…
Jane Anonymous is a rough book. It’s not fun to read and can often be very difficult to stomach, but it sure is entertaining. The pages fly by as the narrative is split up between NOW and THEN. NOW refers to Jane’s life post-abduction, and THEN refers to her time in captivity. Both narratives are engaging and keep the reader on their toes. Since Jane is, at its core, a character study, readers must be able to root for our main character. This is exactly what happens with Jane. We root for her, want to lift her out of her (literal) dark places. She’s not always easy to understand, but that’s precisely what makes her a great protagonist. Jane is not always nice. She is not always agreeable. She is a great example of grief, of the toll trauma can take on a person.
Throughout the novel, I was constantly left guessing whether Jane was telling us the truth or not. She’s not the most reliable narrator–which is a good thing, considering the stress she was under–and some things she thought were real might not be, and vice-versa. Stolarz’s writing is visceral and a little gruesome, the first-person narrative putting us directly in Jane’s head.
Jane isn’t alone in captivity, however. We don’t think. She has Mason, a boy around her age who was kidnapped with her. Mason is her only light, shining through the darkness of captivity. Jane also hears the screams of other victims, and yet, she never gives up, eventually breaking out of her captivity and escaping home.
I don’t want to say much else for fear of spoiling the entire book, but I would encourage you, dear reader, to pick Jane Anonymous up for yourself. It’s one helluva ride.
You can find our copy of Jane Anonymous at the Oreana Library!