In the half-lit work of a broken home, Jo grows up afraid of the shadows and desperate for company. By age seventeen, she has learned to build her own happiness, and her fantasies of love fuel perilous experiments with drugs and sex, and a search for a mother who abandoned her years earlier. Told in the spare, haunting language of an unhappy childhood, "The Pollen Room" is a universal story of love and disillusionment. Ultimately, it is Jo's revelation about her mother's own demons that brings a bittersweet reconciliation of childhood dreams and adult reality. "The Pollen Room" catapulted its twenty-three-year-old author to international fame upon its publication in Europe. Told with powerful insight and maturity, the novel is a testament to our times.