With Romola Garai reading from the novel at the Royal Court tonight, playwright EV Crowe pays tribute to a literary legend and her immortal guide to girlhood
I don't remember who had appointed themselves carrier of the book. But whoever it was, it was probably the tall girl, the same girl who helped at the tuck shop giving out 1p fried eggs and lips like it might be the last thing we ate. She handed me the book gravely, before the start of double English in Year 7. It was my turn. I had done the right thing, allowing the queue to take its course, even waiting patiently while slower readers took it home for a few days. I had finally been handed the chalice of knowledge.
That book was Forever by Judy Blume, and between us we had only one copy. It fell open naturally on the pages where the heroine, Katherine, is introduced to her boyfriend Michael's penis, which he calls Ralph. This seemed only reasonable. I walked around school that day, knowing the book was in my locker, waiting for me. There were a few other texts that made the rounds: Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (a year or so later), The Lifeguard by Richie Tankersley Cusick, Adrian Mole … But it was the Judy Blumes – Forever and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret – that made me feel glad I had a torch with big batteries to read with at night.
In fact, it made me glad I could read. In the story we follow Kath's life from when she firsts meets Michael at a party, starts having sex with him, falls in love with him, and then meets someone else. What struck me immediately was a sense of the book's un-Englishness – but not in a way that grated against my Englishness: Kath's school life, summer camp and the dynamic with her parents was so American somehow. And I remember the potency and fun of the teen intimacy, the letters, the phone calls, the emotional steps towards sex and wondering if this was what we would all experience. On one level, it was everything real life wasn't: unembarrassed conversations about sex, access to real-life boys (my school was all-girls). But it was also everything my experience actually was: the intricacies of female friendship, obsession, lust, nightgowns, underwear, bodily fluids, hilarity and tragedy somehow enmeshed.
It has been interesting coming back to Forever, 20 years later. I worried that Michael might in fact have been a touch creepy and weird, and that Kath would not be the separated-at-birth American twin version of me I imagined at the time. But it more than lived up to expectations, not least in its boldness and braveness. Kath asks her mum, while the two of them are driving, when she lost her virginity (wow); her grandmother sends her sexual-health advice in the post upon hearing she's sexuality active (I mean, imagine). These women aren't afraid of "Ralph", they're not afraid of sex and, most interestingly, Kath has a kind of sexual appetite and agency that feels completely accurate: she's up for it, ready to go, bored of being a virgin. That's striking because – even 38 years after the book was written – these things are still so often underrepresented or, worse, misrepresented. When it comes to sex, teenage women are too often either a rape victim or a punchline. Best of all, I think, is the fact that Kath decides "for ever" might not actually mean for ever for her and Michael. It's feminism in action.
Often, it feels painful looking back, remembering the days when virginity held you in its grim grip, and you didn't even own your own jeans. But re-reading the book isn't cringeworthy, it's uplifting. This book has helped to make most women I know what we are, in the way that only literature can. Perhaps we've kept it secret for some reason; perhaps, like so many aspects of female identity, we've been a little ashamed of it.
Maybe, in a way, that's the point. Judy Blume has a way of making the invisible important. Kath's life was important enough to write a book about. And, while I read it, I felt my life was important too. Judy, if you're reading this, thank you. (And if anyone wants to read the book, I have a brand-new copy.)
• EV Crowe is a playwright and has curated part of the Royal Court's Big Idea: Sex season. Romola Garai will be reading from Forever at the theatre tonight.
via Books: Fiction | guardian.co.uk
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