Be Frank With Me

Be Frank With Me, by Julia Claiborne Johnson builds in intensity as the plot develops and the characters are slowly fleshed out.  The reader is drawn in and after awhile is so involved in the lives of Frank, a young 10 year old child with a very old soul and Alice who comes to take of Frank so his mother, Mimi can finish her long awaited second novel.

Frank is a young boy with a very odd personality which is never really diagnosed with any definitive coding but you wonder about throughout the story.  He dresses in costume outfits from old movies and old styles.  He was born in the wrong era, when it comes to his clothes.  He is a small genius, who can memorize and recite facts as if reading from an encyclopedia.  But, when it comes to personal interaction and social cues he is oblivious.  He is described as an "odd duck", nostalgic for a simpler time.  Frank dressed for an outing, "...he'd refreshed himself with a pass through Wardrobe.  Now he was wearing an outfit more suited to an afternoon's motoring; white gloves, white canvas duster over chinos and a white shirt, leather aviator's cap and goggles, a silk scarf and old-school binoculars around his neck."

Mimi is the illusive author who wrote the bestselling novel, Pitched at the age of 19, which still flies off the shelves but never published again.  Now she has lost everything in a Madoff style ponzi scheme and her editor, Isaac Vargas, sends his girl Friday assistant, Alice to help make sure the novel will be written.  Alice is the young, naive assistant who leaves New York, for Los Angeles thinking she will be typing the manuscript, but ends up taking care of Frank, while Mimi is locked away noisily typing behind closed doors.

Though there are some unrealistic events in the book like Xander, the handyman, family friend who keeps showing up and disappearing throughout the book.  A number of accidents that do not seem plausible and the fact that even though the story takes place in 2009, Mimi is typing her book on a typewriter, not a computer and turns over the care of her son to Alice, even when he is having trouble in school.
What makes the book so wonderful to read is that Alice and Frank develop a beautiful relationship as the plot develops and both seem to grow up and have a chance to be very introspective.  Though the story is presented in a light hearted manner, there are some heart warming moments and there are some sad moments throughout the novel.