As Lola spends more time with them, the language she uses in the diary increasingly shifts to street slang that reminded me of the complex languages in Iain M Banks’ Feersum Endjinn, Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange and even Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. She finds herself having to change her worldview and become a harder person to survive.Īt the same time, her ‘friends’ at her private school shun her and she falls into a friendship with a local girl, Iz, and her gang-friends Weezie & Jude. We see the loss of innocence created by the degradation of the society around Lola. Original UK cover.Īs events swing into motion, Lola’s move to Harlem has consequences. She comes back a very different person from the rebellious young teen who is Lola’s best friend. Her family are forced to downsize and move apartments, Lola ends up having to share a room with her sister again and a friend is sent to ‘Kure-A-Kid’ for rehabilitation after being caught playing truant from school one too many times. As Lola gets older through the novel, through her epistolary diary comments, we witness both the coming of age of the writer and the simultaneous decline of society around her. Glimpses of the news tell of riots in cities, and an ineffectual President regarded by her parents as a buffoon but who is often on the news telling viewers that everything is going to be alright. Her mother struggles to find employment as a lecturer and proof-reader after being let go a few month ago, her father is a scriptwriter, forever going to meetings about scripts that never seem to sell. It’s not long though before we realise that things outside Lola’s life bubble are not great. She also endearingly names her diary Anne (after Anne Frank, I think.) She is very excited about this initial excursion into adulthood and her comments are all about her family, school and other innocent elements of her life. When we begin the novel, we read that Lola (nicknamed ‘Booz’) has just moved into her own room and received a diary – this diary – for her twelfth birthday.

There’s also Cheryl, her younger sister, nicknamed ‘Boobs’, who like many siblings her age is both loveable and typically annoying. Her mother is an out-of-work English Professor, her father a scriptwriter for film. She seems to live a fairly privileged lifestyle with her family in a near-future Manhattan. In traditional Young Adult style, we read about the life of young teenager Lola Hart. It is a read that begins deceptively simply.

This sounded like a challenge to me – so I picked it up and off I went.

To paraphrase her comments, this is one of her favourite reads of all time, yet one that few readers know of – even well-read ones. So, this is one (another one!) that I was inspired to read by Jo Walton.

Random acts of senseless violence