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Rated PG
An unsophisticated teenager from Oregon falls in love with a polished Ivy League liberal on a cross-country vacation.
214 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1980
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About the author
Virginia Euwer Wolff
20 books161 followersOn August 25th, Virginia Euwer Wolff was born in Portland, Oregon. Her family lived on an apple and pear orchard near Mount Hood. Her father died when she was five years old and she admits her childhood was pretty messed up, but she held things together with her violin. She graduated from Smith College. She raised a son and daughter before going back to teaching high school English.
She was almost fifty years old when she started writing children books. Virginia thought she might have one or two good books in her before the end but that was proven wrong. Today, she is no longer teaching, but writes full-time.
When Wolff was asked why she writes for kids and not grown-ups, She responded, "Because I don't think I have a handle on how to write for grown-ups. The grown-up publishing world is so fraught with one-upsmanship, scorn and snobbery. I did write an adult novel. Thank goodness it went out of print. I think we kids' authors still start out with hope every morning. We honor our audience."
Ms. Wolff has received many awards for her works, which include the Golden Kite Award for Fiction for her book Make Lemonade, the ALA Notable Book for Children for The Mozart Season and many, many others.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/virgin...
She was almost fifty years old when she started writing children books. Virginia thought she might have one or two good books in her before the end but that was proven wrong. Today, she is no longer teaching, but writes full-time.
When Wolff was asked why she writes for kids and not grown-ups, She responded, "Because I don't think I have a handle on how to write for grown-ups. The grown-up publishing world is so fraught with one-upsmanship, scorn and snobbery. I did write an adult novel. Thank goodness it went out of print. I think we kids' authors still start out with hope every morning. We honor our audience."
Ms. Wolff has received many awards for her works, which include the Golden Kite Award for Fiction for her book Make Lemonade, the ALA Notable Book for Children for The Mozart Season and many, many others.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/virgin...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 25, 2018
A four-year coming of age story, told in extended flashback following a chance encounter between the main character and her former love interest as adults in their thirties.
The summer she turns 16, country bumpkin Beatrice changes her name when she and her friend meet and hit it off with a pair of college boys, the newly christened "Bitsy" falling for the intellectual and rather self-important Hayes. She spends the rest of summer running around the countryside with him, dazzled by the constant flow of philosophy and five-dollar words from his lips, double dating and drinking and skinny-dipping, until her horrified mother finds her diary and promptly packs her off to boarding school before she can get pregnant. Her relationship with Hayes is, thereafter, sustained by intermittent letters as she focuses on improving her own education and intellect until she feels she can mentally keep up with him.
From there, the book focuses more on the day to day of her friendships, familial relationships and classes, including her eventual acceptance into a prestigious college. She carries the One Day We'll Get Married torch for Hayes even as he is drafted and sent overseas to Germany, while she goes out with a fair number of boys for the practical aspect of dating someone who can actually take you out. Inevitably, the difficulties of a long distance romance combined with the natural evolution of growing from a teenager to a young adult take their toll.
As far as I can tell, this is the book Wolff is referring to when she says she wrote one adult novel and "thank goodness it went out of print." I wasn't sure at first, as it starts out reading like a teen novel, but having gotten to the end, it does seem more like a novel about teens meant for adults. Hayes' language really is pretentious and often insufferable. There are a fair number of sexual references, if nothing super explicit, and it makes creepily light of a running joke about whether or not he'll rape her in order to sleep with her. The book also has pacing problems, suffering in particular from poor transitions, with letters to and from Hayes and others being inserted of nowhere and scenes changing without warning.
However, I'm really glad I read it. The settings were beautifully described (it's obvious that she based Bitsy's childhood home, among other aspects of her life, on her own), I liked Bitsy a lot, and I really enjoyed her summer adventures as well as following along in her classes and violin lessons. Her roommate at St. Margaret's, in particular, is a hoot. There's also a lovely historical aspect, as I assume the present day scenes in the book are meant to be set at the publication date (around 1980), thus putting the bulk of the novel in the sixties, quite possibly the most romantic era for finding yourself and independent adulthood.
For those unaware, it is also worth noting that is book was published before the introduction of the PG-13 rating, which is more like what the book's content matches up to, compared to today's version of PG that tends to mean more like "we weren't allowed to rate this G because it may be frightening or confusing for children under seven."
The summer she turns 16, country bumpkin Beatrice changes her name when she and her friend meet and hit it off with a pair of college boys, the newly christened "Bitsy" falling for the intellectual and rather self-important Hayes. She spends the rest of summer running around the countryside with him, dazzled by the constant flow of philosophy and five-dollar words from his lips, double dating and drinking and skinny-dipping, until her horrified mother finds her diary and promptly packs her off to boarding school before she can get pregnant. Her relationship with Hayes is, thereafter, sustained by intermittent letters as she focuses on improving her own education and intellect until she feels she can mentally keep up with him.
From there, the book focuses more on the day to day of her friendships, familial relationships and classes, including her eventual acceptance into a prestigious college. She carries the One Day We'll Get Married torch for Hayes even as he is drafted and sent overseas to Germany, while she goes out with a fair number of boys for the practical aspect of dating someone who can actually take you out. Inevitably, the difficulties of a long distance romance combined with the natural evolution of growing from a teenager to a young adult take their toll.
As far as I can tell, this is the book Wolff is referring to when she says she wrote one adult novel and "thank goodness it went out of print." I wasn't sure at first, as it starts out reading like a teen novel, but having gotten to the end, it does seem more like a novel about teens meant for adults. Hayes' language really is pretentious and often insufferable. There are a fair number of sexual references, if nothing super explicit, and it makes creepily light of a running joke about whether or not he'll rape her in order to sleep with her. The book also has pacing problems, suffering in particular from poor transitions, with letters to and from Hayes and others being inserted of nowhere and scenes changing without warning.
However, I'm really glad I read it. The settings were beautifully described (it's obvious that she based Bitsy's childhood home, among other aspects of her life, on her own), I liked Bitsy a lot, and I really enjoyed her summer adventures as well as following along in her classes and violin lessons. Her roommate at St. Margaret's, in particular, is a hoot. There's also a lovely historical aspect, as I assume the present day scenes in the book are meant to be set at the publication date (around 1980), thus putting the bulk of the novel in the sixties, quite possibly the most romantic era for finding yourself and independent adulthood.
For those unaware, it is also worth noting that is book was published before the introduction of the PG-13 rating, which is more like what the book's content matches up to, compared to today's version of PG that tends to mean more like "we weren't allowed to rate this G because it may be frightening or confusing for children under seven."
Displaying 1 of 1 review