A Girl Called Jules

Well I finally found a copy on Amazon at a price I wanted to pay. $4 in fact. I posted about this book a few times in the past. My sister had it - she can't remember where she got it, it was an old and ratty copy when let me have it. I must have read it the first time when I was in my early teens, and she made me promise to keep it hidden. She had a lot of stuff that had to stay hidden, lol... anyhow... somewhere along the way it got lost, or tossed out. I have no idea. She didn't take it, and she was a little pissed when I told it I couldn't find it. When I moved out of the house I searched high and low.... gone... I figured, oh well, no big deal.

But this book had an enormous effect on me, and I read it many many times. The lead character Jules has a troubled life and is having difficulty making the transition to being adult. Sex is mentioned on nearly every page. Jules has little encounters of all kinds, with all sort of people. I'm not going to go on and on about it, just that there was a chapter where she is on vacation with her mother, and she has her first period - a very bad one. She is devastated by this because she can't go swimming. And she teases a local boy about the fact that she's menstruating, and he gets upset about it, but she forces him to see the blood. And he kisses it.

So, to me, this was all very weird and confusing. So I read it over and over. It wasn't until I was 16 or 17 that it began to dawn on me that the story intrigued me so much because I identified with so much that was going on in the book.

And now I have a copy of it again! Cath was not impressed, lol. But she said she will read it when I'm done reminiscing.