We all remember high school days, and the simultaneously exhilarating and excruciating roller coaster of emotions in those years. Looking back, the feelings of those days remain at least as vivid as any in our later years: the love, the fear, the self-doubt, the hope. Those early years shape our lives, yet so much of that time is buried and forgotten in our experiences as fully grown adults. Our senses are dulled with everyday cares, partners, realism and all the yucky perspectives that make up adulthood.And it is very seldom that a work of fiction can so fully awaken adolescence as does Big Girl Small. Judy Lohden is an everywoman/everygirl teenager, but with fears of loneliness, unreturned love, self-doubt, self-consciousness raised to an art form by DeWoskin's central conceit: Lohden is a dwarf, a girl small in stature but big in every other way that counts.Big Girl Small is a first-person narrative throughout, the voice of Judy Lohden. This is an extraordinary accomplishment by the writer - the voice rings true, is unique, is vivid and alive. Yet it comes from a person with a context and set of experiences few of us share. What we do share are the emotions. good and bad decisions, ambition and diffidence of Lohden. It is a voice both mature and distant, with a wry and ironic humor and self-mockery throughout, that place the central character's hopes and disastrous choices in context. Yet also a voice with the naivete and hope of youth. Lohden is a great character, a small, female Caulfield at play in a Midwest high school. You will be very glad to have met her.deWoskin's two earlier books also make great summer reads: Foreign Babes in Beijing is a story of a young American woman living in China before the expatriate and investment invasions. And Repeat After Me is a moving tale of a young woman, living in New York, whose obsessions and loves and hopes will stay with you long after you close the covers. All of her books show a rare genius for narrative, a characteristic and literate wit, and a craftswoman's way with language, that will both delight and challenge you.