Piano man Book

“Piano Man”, by Joyce Sweeney, is about 14 year old Deidre, spending her summer in Florida with her naïve, spontaneous, best friend, Susie, and widowed, timid mother, Janet. Deidre is an intelligent, mature young girl, and also has a great skill in cooking, which she is able to impress many with, including her mother’s possible new love interest later in the story.

Speaking of love interests, quite soon, Susie finds an older, flirty boyfriend in the mall that her and Deidre love to hang out in. Curt, Susie’s boyfriend, always seems to be a pesky tease, although Deidre eventually warms up to him. During this time, she feels like quite a third wheel, because of the fact that she’d never had a boyfriend before, and could not relate to the connection Susie and Curt had, or at least thought they did. However, this drastically changes when Deidre’s new apartment neighbor, Jeff, moves in right above her.

One boring day out of the summer, she was home alone when she heard the sound of a piano playing from throughout the apartment. She soon finds out that it was actually Jeff from upstairs, and was immediately attracted to him from the moment they had met. Jeff was a 26 year old pianist working at a nightclub, so obviously this crush was very inappropriate for a girl Deidre’s age; he simply could not develop an intimate relationship with her, no matter how hard she tried. Aware of this, she still attempts to grab his attention as much as possible and act more mature than she really was in order for him to “realize” that her age doesn’t matter… This was not a very smart plan, because unlike Deidre, Jeff understood that she was going through puberty and still a child, regardless. The more Deidre falls in love with Jeff, the more she develops a need to grow up.

Deidre finally realizes that her big plan to form a relationship with Jeff was unrealistic when she tries to kiss him in his apartment. He is immediately disgusted and freaked out, and starts to shout in Deidre’s face about how the entire time he had thought she was just a nice girl, but really, she was trying to get him to date her. He now feels shocked and betrayed. Deidre runs home to her own apartment, clearly upset, and crying. She never wanted things to end up this way- he was supposed to fall in love back! Now that her plan is ruined, she starts to question why he would reject her so harshly. This is when it hits her- she was still underage. The next couple days, her and Jeff work things through, and remain friends, despite their awkward encounter. Susie and Curt, however, start to fight over small things due to Curt’s anger issues, and Deidre’s mother starts to think about marrying the man she had been seeing.

One big idea throughout the book was obviously romance. The entire story is full of different types of relationships, from casual and rocky, to stable and serious. The main point is, love is blind. Sometimes we fall in love with the right people at the wrong time. “She’d never really admitted to herself that she was in love with Jeff, let alone to someone else. Anyway, it wasn’t love, exactly. That would be stupid. After all, the odds of anything really happening with him were pretty slim.” (Sweeney, 65) What I mean by this is, maybe Deidre could have really found the one, if she was of age. Maybe later on in their lives, Deidre and Jeff could be in the best relationship. If Deidre had just waited to see, instead of rushing things and expecting everything she wanted to come to her in an instant, then things could work out in her favor. Clearly Deidre was a bit stubborn and close minded.

Overall, “Piano Man” was a bit cheesy, crude and inappropriate. It was also sometimes cliché, and the ending felt too rushed, almost as if the writer had no time to wrap things up. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in a quick read, or likes teenage romance books. ⅗