I enjoyed reading this book and agree with the other ladies, but I am wondering what this book is saying about first love, and how younger (targeted) readers might perceive this message. I think Blume is very realistic in making Kath move on from her first love and find another boyfriend. Still, I wonder if younger readers see in the same way, especially when they themselves may still be hooked on their first love, or have yet to encounter him. Does Kath’s new boyfriend crush dreams of a long-lasting first love? If so, is this good or bad?

To find a teen’s perspective on this book I went to amazon.com and read the book reviews for this book. I found one post by a fourteen-year old readerthat answered some of my questions. This girl loved the book and appreciated the realism in the novel. She says she knows first loves do not last forever and liked that Blume was honest about this as well as the sexual parts of the novel. Although she describes them as “graphic,” this girl is glad to learn about “sexual encounters.”

I am very glad to see that this girl learned from and enjoyed Forever. Her passionate review of this book has boosted my confidence in the novel. I believe this is an important book for young girls to read in its description of sexual matters as well as for its story. As noted by another lady, contemporary books for teens pale in subject matter when compared to Forever.

vs.

The difference between these two images is striking, Kath from Forever is the naturally pretty high school senior from anytown, USA and the cast of characters on the left frankly look like they are trying way too hard. Yes, they may be more glamorous but their sexed up images come off as fake and kind of pathetic in contrast with the real girl to their right.

I couldn’t agree more with the women that posted before me that this book was refreshing in its simplicity. Even more than refreshing, however, it was generative. It supplied something that most of the other ChickLit we read previously did not: a purpose beyond pure entertainment value.

Despite many changes between the late 1970s and today, access to “safer sex” information among high school students is still shockingly hard to come by. With many schools employing abstinence only education, or no sex-ed at all, high school students are left relatively in the dark about their reproductive rights and choices.

This book, in a clear and simple way, presents the choices that Kath and all women have (through the help of her grandmother) for practicing safer sex, and walks the reader through exactly what happens at her Planned Parenthood visit. By doing so, dispelling any fear/element of the unknown about actually using a service like PP.

I question what, if anything, comes from literature written for teens and pre-teens today. Do we have a 2008 equivalent to Forever or has writing for the greater good been lost in the attempt to write to sell? If anything, what comes from reading about the unrealistic lives of the girls in Gossip Girl is the perpetuation of a socially acceptable model of under-aged drinking and casual sex. Yet, after presenting this model as ideal, young women are left without the information as to how to protect themselves from its implications.

Below is a link to the website for the Safe Sex Store based in Ann Arbor, MI. On the site is important information about contraception, STIs and sexual health.

Safe Sex Store

I don’t know if my peers felt this/ found it uncomfortable, but I was kind of freaked out that I found myself able to relate more to seniors in highschool than the high-powered executive women of our previous novels.  There was a realism in Blume’s text, with true emotions that seemed to be otherwise lacking in adult chick lit.  Maybe it was the time in which it was written?  But there is something refreshing about this “scandalous” read for teens that books like Gossip Girls has yet to produce.  I feel like recently, teen books are either considered too saccharine– Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants– or we’re subjected to teens ripping off each other’s close at the Plaze hotel in between martinis and lines of coke– a la Gossip Girl or A-List.  In Forever, relationships are the book, not just accessories to glamourous lifestyles.  Maybe I wanted to relive my highschool glory days when relationships were painfully awkward and the pressing issue was sex, not fitting in sex while you’re climbing the corporate ladder.

There was also something very refreshing to me about how simply written this book was.  Blume let the dialogue of the characters speak for itself.  In chick lit it seems as though there is always an explanation like– “And I did that because I’m a woman and I have to work twice as hard as a man.”  However, Blume lets the awkward pauses and elipses speak for themselves.  The messages are wholely conveyed through the characters conversations with each other.

Blume’s Forever seems more to me like the real world than that of Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle.  It’s a world of real life consequences and problems to young girls.  Where young people can get VD from “laying” random people over the summer.  The kids aren’t precocious and the only therapy is that which they offereach other.  Perhaps this is a reflection of generational gaps.  However it is not the simplicity of these characters I find refreshing as much as the lack of feigned complexity.  Perhaps it is because it was a one of a kind book of it’s time and did not fit into a prepackaged genre.

Until next time,

xx,

Sattie

I hate to begin this post by making a stereotypical remark about women – for example, how they are the more empathetic sex. But, I do acknowledge that pathos matters in a work of fiction, and that characters, male or female, need to have a psychological life accessible to the reader – hopes and dreams, personal failures and feelings of inadequacy. I am realizing after reading Judy Blume’s “Forever” that empathy and pathos matters a lot in fiction, and that Chick Lit characters, for the most part, lack this aspect of pathos. The character to whom I related most closely was Nan, and out of all of the Chick Lit characters we have read, I find her to be the most fully fleshed out character who had an accessible internal life. But outside of her, the characters we have been reading are very superficial in terms of their emotional and psychological lives.

In “Forever”, the main character named Katherine narrates the novel, and she tells the story with a distinct and honest voice. This first person perspective lends sincerity to the character and it creates the gestalt of a real high schooler dealing with issues of sexuality and personal identity. From the first sentence of the book, I was drawn into her world. This is a very different experience than I have been having reading Chick Lit books, where I have been reading cliches and tag lines. I wasn’t being sold the lifestyle and image that is vital to the Chick Lit world and characters. I remember when reading “Lipstick Jungle” that I had a difficult time keeping the three main characters straight, and it seems that this was because although they were leading different lives on the surface, they had no internal monologue that distinguished one from the others.

The material aspects of life, such as movies, famous people, etc are important to Katherine the way they are to Chick Lit characters. And I admit that I cringed a bit when I heard these cultural references, perhaps out of fear that the book would descend into the name dropping world of “Sex and The City”. But Blume is able to maintain the integrity of her character even though she had these more superficial concerns (which all of us do!). The Chick Lit characters are like shiny, plastic mannequins. They lack grit and authenticity, and this makes it difficult for me to connect with them and to “feel their pain”. The superficial, almost pornographic quality of their lives holds the attention for only so long in a book, but it interestingly it does succeed where it should, on television.