Blume’s first adult novel in more than 15 years, based on three plane crashes in 1952, is the perfect jigsaw of narrative and emotion
My younger sister was a Judy Blume fan. Because of this, I boycotted Blume’s work, considering it to be for “babies”. My sister’s favourite was a novel with a title so idiotic (in my then view) that I teased her about it for years: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. It sold millions of copies. Like all Blume’s most successful books, it was a pre-teen insight into a teen world: first bras, first kisses and a healthy dose of existential angst. Suffice to say, I was pretty much the only teenage girl in the 1970s and 1980s in the US and the UK boycotting Blume’s work. More fool me.
A new novel by Judy Blume, then, is a major event. An “adult” novel is even more of an event, especially when it’s the first in more than 15 years. (Not that kind of adult novel, calm down.) If I came to this book – unusually – as a Blume novice, then at least I am one type of reader her publishers will be hoping for: fans of Anne Tyler and Curtis Sittenfeld looking for accomplished storytelling about middle America. The other type of reader? Blume’s legions of fans, of course, who discovered her through Forever, Summer Sisters and, yes, Margaret, generating sales of 85m copies in 32 languages.
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A new novel by Judy Blume, then, is a major event. An “adult” novel is even more of an event, especially when it’s the first in more than 15 years. (Not that kind of adult novel, calm down.) If I came to this book – unusually – as a Blume novice, then at least I am one type of reader her publishers will be hoping for: fans of Anne Tyler and Curtis Sittenfeld looking for accomplished storytelling about middle America. The other type of reader? Blume’s legions of fans, of course, who discovered her through Forever, Summer Sisters and, yes, Margaret, generating sales of 85m copies in 32 languages.
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