Roommates

Debbie Jones #1

by Laura Cooper Rendina, Ruth King (Illustrator)

This will introduce Debbie Jones, who was not the plain Jane her name implies. She was a smooth blond Sophomore, an outgoing personality who loved to fool around with the gang and be in plays and kid the teachers into believing she aimed to become a writer some day. Debbie came from a large family of brothers and sisters where you learned fast to get along with others, while being strictly on your own.
But for once Debbie was stumped - she simply could not hit it off with Rachele Newman, and she'd drawn Rachele as her roommate at Pine Ridge School - Rachele with her grown up-tastes and cultivated ways; Debbie roughhousing with her stuff all over the place! And Rachele's father a popular novelist, separated from her mother, while Debbie's Dad and Mom struggled indistinguishably together to bring up the family! And Rachele knowing all those grown-up artists, and living in New York, and wearing Paris models, and...and -
Well, if it hadn't been for what Debbie's older brother Phil discovered about Rachele this might have been a quite different story, instead of something pretty satisfying about what can happen to exact opposites when they begin to look around them. (quoted from the dust-jacket)

Genres: Young Adult

214 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Laura Cooper Rendina was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, went to the public schools in Massachusetts, and was editor of the Cambridge High School magazine. Having made a series of trips to Europe, Tunis, and the Virgin Islands, she eventually settled down in a beach house on Siesta Key, Sarasota (Florida), in 1946. It was here that she wrote all eight of her children's books, beginning with the 1948 Roommates.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sophomores and roommates Debbie Jones and Rachele Newman, both new girls at the Pine Ridge School, were as different as two students could be. One, Debbie, was the middle child of a large and loving family, and an open and enthusiastic (though sometimes difficult) girl with a good heart; while the other, Rachele, was the only child of divorced parents, had been educated at home by her famous author-father, and possessed a dignified reserve that sometimes put others off. Where Debbie was "magnificently proportioned," tall and blond, with an air of self confidence, Rachele was petite, small and brunette, with an elegant loveliness of her own. Where Debbie was rather loud, and quite messy, Rachele was quiet, and liked to have everything in its place. In short, as much as it was possible for two beautiful girls with intelligence and good hearts to be complete opposites, they were.

Naturally, in these circumstances, being assigned to the same room did not go well, at first. Debbie, disappointed at not having a roommate to adore, gravitated toward the popular Fran, with her lighthearted way of making everything seem fun; while Rachele, despite her promises to her father, shut herself away from all the other girls, and most especially her roommate, whom she found superficial and rude. The slow process, involving many missteps and misunderstandings, whereby both girls learned that the other was not what she seemed, makes up the bulk of the story, in Laura Cooper Rendina's Roommates, which also sees Rachele gaining some much-needed perspective on both of her parents, and her relationships with them, and Debbie, after many false starts, finally finding something (writing) about which she truly care.

On a certain level, I found myself enjoying this boarding school tale, first published in 1948, and the first of four books featuring Debbie Jones - subsequent titles include: Debbie Jones , Summer For Two and My Love for One - that Rendina penned. Some classic school story motifs are here, from the initial false friend whose duplicity is eventually discovered by the heroine, to the sneaking out at night (for a coke at the local drugstore, in this case, rather than for a midnight feast). Other school-story themes, by contrast, such as the girl who will not tell on her fellows, whatever the circumstances, are noticeably absent here, as Rendina pins an important plot resolution on Debbie helping a young girl come forward to clear her name (and by extension, cast the blame on the rightful party).

The author has a good sense of her two main characters, and how they think, capturing the mercurial changes in their perceptions of the people around them, and the accompanying emotional turmoil that this provokes in them. On the other hand, sometimes the language itself felt a little overly dramatic, as if Rendina were trying just a little too hard to capture that sense of adolescent angst. Also, the sub-plot in which Rachele and Phil, Debbie's older brother, fall in love at first glance, was unconvincing and rather creepy. After all, Phil is an ex-soldier (a member of a bazooka team in WWII), and a college student at Harvard, while Rachele is a high school sophomore. I know "serious" romances started younger, in previous generations, but this seemed to be pushing it a bit... Leaving aside these issues, I did enjoy this for what it was - an American boarding school story, and a late 1940s, early 1950s style teen novel - and will most likely continue to read the series, to see how the character of Debbie Jones develops.