Good Girls

With so much silly chick lit around it is a relief to come across a novel intent on honesty rather than shallow escapism. And honest this novel definitely is, with its warning – or should it be guarantee? – of ‘explicit content’ on the cover certainly justified. It focuses on 16-year-old Audrey Porter, a ferociously ambitious American high school pupil who falls for Luke DeSalvio, a hunk with a well developed torso. Photographed performing a sexual act during a party, she becomes notorious at school and in disgrace at home after her classmates as well as her parents are sent the developed picture. At her parents’ insistence a full gynaecological examination follows during which – like her sexual relations with Luke – no details are spared. Audrey’s relationships with her friends also suffer after she has been re-designated as little more than a ‘ho’ by those previously jealous of her academic ability. Angry and resentful, she briefly throws in her lot with two other girls also labelled as sluts, only to discover that they are in truth no different from everyone else. This is a witty as well as a wise book. When Audrey views the stains on the sheets after the first time she ‘hooks up’ with Luke she exclaims ‘Was a lamb sacrificed here?’ Other one-liners zing off the page when she and her friends get stuck into their favourite topics, in particular the weakness of the male sex. But there is plenty of unrestrained young love in this story as well, with Audrey’s feelings for Luke a passionate amalgam of the physical and the emotional. Described by its publisher as ‘Forever for the 21st Century’, it would be nice indeed if this intelligent and uncompromising novel could enjoy anything like the same success.