This Is All
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Subtitled The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn this is the story of Cordelia from the time she is 15 until she is 20. She is pregnant and plans to give this account to her daughter on her 16th birthday so that they can share their youth together. She chooses the old and famous Japanese book, 'The Pillow Book' by Sei Shonagon, as a model in order to include all kinds of things she has already written as well as the episodes and thoughts she has now as she compiles her book.
She tells of her mother (who died when Cordelia was 5) of her father and her aunt Doris (who marry when she is 16), of her love for William Blacklin, the boy with whom she chooses to have her first sex - and with whom she falls deeply in love. She writes about Julie Martin her teacher who helps her spiritually, describes her love affair with an older married man and her terrifying sexual experience with an unbalanced young man who is obsessed with her. The book includes thoughts on being a women, on poetry, music, reading and writing, on being pregnant and finally of her marriage to William.
This Is All is an anthology, written in six 'books' of Cordelia's adolescent life, by turns funny, poignant, sad, exciting, fascinating ironic and truthful about topics that parents often do not tell their children. It is a richly entertaining and challenging read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While waiting for her baby to arrive, 19-year-old Cordelia Kenn constructs a pillow book, a collection of writings on various topics, "a portrait of myself as a teenager." She hopes that when her daughter (she knows it's a girl) turns 16, the two can read the book together, to "find out how similar we are and how different." After a brief introduction, Cordelia begins recounting her experiences from three months before her 16th birthday, when she selects 18-year-old William Blacklin as her first boyfriend for "all-out, all-in-all, all-the-way-sex," prompted by a magazine article stating that "the average age when girls... 'lost their virginity' was sixteen years and three months." Chambers (Postcards from No Man's Land) starts with a promising premise: the tender relationship that grows between Will and Cordelia. The ensuing discussions (between Cordelia and Will, and also between Cordelia and her aunt) about first love and the role sex plays in a relationship provides much food for thought. However, this 800-page tome starts to ramble after about 200 pages, and may cause readers to lose interest in Cordelia's ruminations. Her narration chronicles her sexual history not only with Will, but with a 50-year-old man, plus her kidnapping and attempted rape by an acquaintance. Readers may well ask why, out of the myriad experiences a teen may wish to record for posterity with the express idea of sharing it with her child, would the heroine choose to focus almost exclusively on her sexual experiences. Ages 16-up.
