Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

Teenage fiction in diary form has been attempted many times but this uninhibited account of young adolescence is presented with laidback, witty veracity via its 14-year-old narrator. Jokes and plays on words abound creating the feel of an intense, hothouse world in which everything is there to be freshly experienced, thought about and enjoyed. Suddenly a star after unexpectedly seeing off a bully in the toilets, Georgia muses that she is now ‘cock of the 4th’. She continues, ‘I don’t know what the girl equivalent of ‘cock’ is…surely it can’t be ‘vagina’. I am vagina of the 4th doesn’t have the same ring to it somehow…’. Rennison’s narrative has a light touch and is often hilarious about insecurities and doubts around body shape, how to kiss, boyfriends and so forth. It misfires somewhat when insecurity about sexual identity crops up. There are many references to lesbians – what they do in bed, what they look like and am I one - preoccupations that are left hanging in the air rather than linked to the story’s tentative conclusion as Georgia becomes ‘nearly Robbie’s girlfriend’ that it is perhaps the person that really matters.