My dip into the world of Judy Blume continues. Upon finishing Forever..., I am now reading another book I missed back in my youth, Then Again, Maybe I Won't.
Back to Forever... I enjoyed it--not to the level of Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret--but not too far off. As I mentioned in my previous post, the book deals frankly with teen sex, but in a realistic manner. Not sensationalistic, not glamorizing. That said, I can see why adults had a fit about it when it was published in 1975 and continue to have a fit about it in 2023.
So now it's on to Then Again, Maybe I Won't, which was published in 1971. This book is essentially the boys' version of Are You There God?.... This time, the main character--Tony--is a 12-year-old boy from a middle class Italian-American family in Jersey City. His father sells some sort of electronic invention (identified as an "electronic cartridge"--whatever that is) and gets a lucrative new job. The family moves to what seems like an upper middle class suburb in Long Island. Like Margaret's move from Manhattan to the suburbs of New Jersey, it's a big change of environment for Tony. The family is in a higher economic strata, but still dealing with issues that money can't fix, namely a grandmother with significant health challenges and the death in Vietnam of Tony's older brother.
And that's where I've left off. I'll report back later.
I think this Judy Blume/YA reading is a minor diversion and by June at the latest I'll be back to reading "grown-up" books.
That is all for now...
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