Teenager Discovers Kissing – Stop Press!

As the saying goes, teenagers cannot see beyond the end of their noses and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging by Louise Rennison adds to the body of evidence – narrator Georgia Nicholson is a very self-absorbed girl. Unless of course beyond the end of one’s nose are a pair of boyish lips on which to experiment. Georgia approaches kissing like netball training, at one stage going to a boy Peter’s house who teaches kissing skills to girls “but doesn’t take any money or anything” and she discovers that kissing is best when you fancy the kissee, in fact you go “jelloid”. Georgia’s poor mother with a not-quite toilet trained three year old, self-absorbed Georgia and a hairy husband in New Zealand could probably have told her that, but the older characters the parents and teachers are figures of fun in this book.

The novel is for the funny girls. It shows its readers you can be funny and desirable (even dressed up as an olive). Georgia is often a funny narrator. “His Mick Jagger impression did not stop at the lips. He was a lunatic on the dance floor, strutting around with his hands on his hips. I nearly died. Then Sven joined in, dragging Rosie with him. His style of dancing was more Cossack, a lot of going down into a squat position and kicking his legs out”. And of course kissing is lovely; it’s lovely to discover its loveliness and lovely to be reminded of its loveliness. Here is how it went for Georgia: “I went completely jelloid – it was like being part girl, part jellyfish. It was mega brilliant. Twenty out of ten type kissing. I got all the stuff you’re supposed to have fireworks whooshing in your head, bands playing, sea crashing in and out”. Maybe I’ve been a little hard on Georgia… but she’s is unrelenting on parents and teachers!