Christy

by Carole Bolton

Christy, at sixteen, is neither woman nor child. Until a distinguished stranger comes to call she is content to live in the pleasant limbo of late adolescence, but handsome Gideon Myles walks in as the catalyst in a first romantic situation. Perturbed at new feelings of jealousy and discontent, Christy loses her first love to an older woman but finds infinite compensations in the friendship of Myles and in her own newly acquired poise and confidence.

217 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

Reviews

[Christy Fenzl]

I acquired this book ~15 years ago in a used bookstore near Columbus OH, as a novelty (and because I love old books!), and I finally got around to reading it as my 36th book of 2021.



Spoiler Alert:



The 16 year old protagonist is boy-crazy, falls in love with a completely hot guy beyond her reach, and subsequently has her heart broken. I wanted so much for Christy to end up with her love interest, but alas... That said, this was a completely charming, well-written book, and I'm glad I finally read it. It was fascinating to be transported back to 1960!

[Matthew]

I found this book by accident while strolling through a large antique mall. The illustration on the front looked like a girl who was about to cut a B for staring at her boyfriend the wrong way. Without reading what it was about, I snatched it up, and I'm so glad I did. This was such a fun YA from 1960. It was like an old Deanna Durbin film meets Gidget meets a Françoise Sagan novel all rolled into one. The author clearly did a good job at displaying the mixed emotions that go into an adolescent. After taking a YA literature class over the summer, I can safely say this book is no different than most of what I read that's being published today.

It's about a sixteen-year-old girl named Christy who falls head over heels in love with her dad's friend, who not only comes to town on a visit but is a successful author. Christy has to balance her affections between the worldly man, the brooding younger college guy who works at the library and aspires to become an archaeologist, and the popular jock on the football team. While this all sounds as sweet as cotton candy, the author did an incredible job at balancing everything.

The book tackles many YA themes, including adolescence, identity, first love, heartbreak, emotional maturity, self-discovery, female empowerment, social expectations, and gender roles. While it is set in the 1960s, the real depth comes from the author's technique in addressing the issues. There is a shift in how the main character represents herself during that in-between stage of adolescence that makes it feel more contemporary and less Leave It to Beaver.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It is fascinating how we dismiss these old books as having no meaning to our lives today when, in actuality, if you remove the technical aspects of the time, at their core, they read no differently—the themes explored are the same themes explored in contemporary YA literature. I think the reason this book is lost in an antique mall today is that nobody made a film out of it. Anyway, really entertaining blast from the past.