Judy Blume gets personal with latest – and last? – book

Judy Blume, seen in 2013, Author Judy Blume poses for a portrait in Santa Monica, California, May 31, 2013. 

SARAH LILLEYMAN - The Globe and Mail - May. 29 2015

I am one of those young women – there’s an army of us – who grew up on Judy Blume’s novels, and I can remember when I was a kid imagining what it would be like to talk to her.

When I finally got my chance last week, to the great chagrin of my younger self, I started off by making Judy Blume cry.

“I’m going to stop you for a moment, thank you,” Blume says about two minutes into our phone conversation from her home in New York. I’d opened with how much I loved her book. “I’m getting very emotional at this point, so when someone says something nice to me about the book I burst into tears.”

So, not a great start. But I was speaking the truth (as if I’d ever fib to Judy Blume).

Blume’s career spans more than 40 years of writing groundbreaking YA novels that delved deep into the minds of women, tackling intimate subjects such as teenage sex, menstruation and masturbation. But with her new novel, In the Unlikely Event, Blume has tackled a new frontier – this is her first crack at historical fiction.

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and from The New York Times:

What Judy Blume’s Books Meant

By ALEXANDRA ALTER and KATHRYN SHATTUCKJUNE 1, 2015 - The New York Times

Judy Blume’s novel “In the Unlikely Event” is her first for adults since 1998. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

People have intense feelings about Judy Blume. Fans, readers, booksellers — even other authors and celebrities — often dissolve into tears upon meeting her, confessing that books like “Forever ... ” and “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” got them through adolescence; taught them about sex, love and friendship; and provided their first glimpse of adulthood. Ms. Blume has come to expect overwrought reactions.

“When they cry when they meet me — and I cry, too — it’s because I’m their childhood,” Ms. Blume said in a recent interview with The Irish Times. “I remind them of their childhood.”

Ms. Blume will be greeting fans on a cross-country book tour to promote her new novel, “In the Unlikely Event,” out on Tuesday from Knopf, her first book for adults in 17 years. The story was inspired by her teenage years in Elizabeth, N.J., in the 1950s, when the city was devastated by a bizarre series of plane crashes within the span of a few months.

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