Brash, loud, rude, funny, heartbreaking and vulnerable and all too good at bringing back the hot, cringing embarrassment of being a teenager, Paper Aeroplanes by Dawn O’Porter is all about the friendship between Flo and Renée, fifteen, and growing up in the ’90s on the island of Guernsey. Goose catches up with them a few years later as they prepare to leave school and move on.
The blurbs…
It is 1994 and fifteen-year-old Guernsey schoolgirls Renée and Flo are not meant to be friends. Thoughtful, introspective Flo couldn’t be more different to extroverted, sexually curious Renée. But what they have in common runs deep. Loneliness, frustration, and the longing for escape from their dysfunctional families…
Fifteen is an age when anything can happen, life stretches out before you. Where every happiness feels like heaven. And every betrayal is the end of the world.
For Renée and Flo, it’s the year they become themselves.
and
Renée and Flo are eighteen and on the brink of their adult lives. But while Flo is determined to get to uni and take Renée with her, Renée can feel her sense of independence soar.
As Flo turns to the church for support, Renée embarks on a seductive and perilous relationship with an older man…
In their final year before leaving their home on Guernsey, will Renée and Flo still be each other’s soulmates, or is this the end of their friendship?
I read both books back-to-back in a thoroughly indulgent splurge of nostalgia – I think these are books for teenage girls to read, and then share with their mothers…
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is a graphic novel, showing her childhood in Iran during revolutions and the war, her adolescence in Europe away from Iran and her return to her home country in her early twenties. This story definitely brings lots of serious topics onto the table but shows how Marjane doesn’t understand how bad things are until she starts to grow up. I actually enjoyed this book more than I thought I would and I plan to watch the film soon. I recommend this to anyone.
