Meg

by Theodora Keogh

The initiation rites of a slum gang... the awakening beauty of spring's first morning.... Prostitute, pimp, poison-eater. Every New York street offers exciting adventure; every encounter is a new experience for Meg. Very soon she will become a New York debutante. But now she is learning about a different world and her afternoon adventures are far afield from her wealthy home or her select, expensive school... This unusual novel bares the secret life of a care-free adolescent whose uninhibited curiosity lead

Genres: Fiction

145 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

A granddaughter of president Theodore Roosevelt, Keogh wrote nine novels during the period of 1950 to 1962. Her novels tended to focus on characters with psychological conflicts and often dark sides to their personalities. In this regard, her themes are similar to those of novelist Patricia Highsmith.Theodora’s works explored such dark areas and themes as rape, incest, double lives, and a doctor’s psychological and emotional fascination with a child criminal. Her novels were also noteworthy for exploring gay and lesbian themes, which were daring topics for the era in which she was writing. Such themes brought Theodora a measure of notoriety in her day. Her novels were largely neglected after the 1960s but have recently been rediscovered and reissued. (summary ex Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a recurring problem with My Big Fat Reading Project. I keep discovering books that I missed on the lists of earlier years. Thus, the project keeps getting bigger and fatter! Just the other month I learned about Theodora Keogh. She wrote nine novels between 1950 and 1962. Meg was her first.

She was a trail blazer and I just had to read her. She had a most interesting life which you can read about on Wikipedia: Raised in NYC on the Upper East Side, private school, Radcliffe, then married a costume designer and moved to Paris.

In 1950 I was three years old, first-born daughter, and already plotting my independence. Meg is 12 years old, attending private school in NYC, living in an elegant apartment. But she has a private life with some street kids from the slums, all boys, who have adventures on the banks of the Hudson River.

Meg has the usual concerns for her age revolving around rivalries at school over best friends. She is also fascinated by a family friend who is a poet and playwright. She gets into scrapes but always seems to emerge unscathed. She is fearless and an expert when it comes to lying!

When Theodora Keogh began to publish her books, she was considered daring for her modernist style, her portrayals of psychological conflicts and other dark themes. (Patricia Highsmith wrote a rare and glowing review of Meg.) After a decade of publishing, she had been relegated to the status of a pulp writer, her books went out of print, and she quit writing. Oh, the many ways brilliant women can be silenced.

I know I would have felt less alone, had I read her books in the 1960s. In truth, I feel less alone reading them now! I feel like I did when I first read Pippi Longstocking when I was 12.

[David Madden · Rating 4 out of 5]

MEG is one of the finest of this very fine writer, famous in the forties and fifties, along with her husband, Tom Keogh, who illustrated some of her 10 or so novels; she is now little-known, a loss to readers of novelists whose vision is unique, but not to her, because she died recently, a sort of recluse in Boone, North Carolina [I just missed her}.
Recently, I read also THE DOUBLE DOOR, and plan next to read THE FASCINATOR, which I read in the army in 1954 in Alaska, setting for my memoir in progress MY INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE ARMY.

[Christie Bane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a coming-of-age story about a little rich girl in Manhattan. I am not sure of the time period exactly, but I believe it was the 1950's. While it was enjoyable to see that growing up was always tough even when you live in Manhattan and have rich parents, there was nothing exceptional in this book. I think it got on my list from a New York Times article I read a long time ago. I just had a very hard time finding it other than secondhand for $100+. I am pleased to report I did NOT pay that much since I finally found it on Apple Books for .99. The lesson here is that just because the New York Times said it was worth reading doesn't make it so.

[Alonzo Church · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I bought this large lot of paperbacks off of ebay, an I am reading every single one of them (except Lady Chatterly's Lover, because it was abridged and I jut didn't want to anyway). And this it was one of the batch and it was the one I grabbed.

Story here is advertised on the paperback like the girl in question is Lolita or something learning about the world on the mean streets of New York, before making her first debutante debut. I was hoping I wasn't going to blush all the way through as I got some tale of a girl finding some paperback nirvanna of strong drink and burly teens.

And what did I get -- pretty much a coming of age story of the fearless girl who is staring down the bull in New York, told with a lot of charm (if not a lot of narrative focus). This is a realistic view of the life and times of a 12 year old girl who just wants to run non-sexually wild, have a friend or two, and somehow survive her snotty school and her angry weak father. Worth a read.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really well-written, entrancing book. See my review at http://danielshankcruz.com/.