Love and its delusions are a huge part of teenage life. Allison Pearson's second novel, I Think I Love You, is a delightful story about a teenage girl named Petra who's living in Wales in 1974 and falls head over heels in love with David Cassidy – the teen idol who played Keith in The Partridge Family.
Why David Cassidy? According to an interview on NPR, Pearson talks about her teenage obsession:
"I was 13 in 1974 and he bestrode my teenage world like a Colossus in a white jumpsuit with silver embroidery," Pearson says. "Girls slightly younger tended to be Donny Osmond girls or Michael Jackson girls but for my generation, it tended to be David Cassidy."
Pearson's book explores the feelings and fears many teenage girls have about how to dress right, how to fit in with the "right" crowd, and even how to kiss right. Fear of doing things wrong is a big issue in the minds of teenagers (and adults). Daughters and their mothers down through the ages have had to deal with these fears.
Reading the book takes you into the mind of a teenager and all the teen drama that may seem like nothing now to you as an adult – but I doubt few of us would want to repeat the teen years. Pearson obviously remembers plenty of details from her childhood and she has a teenage daughter of her own.
Allison Pearson also wrote the best-selling novel about middle-class working mothers called I Don't Know How She Does It that became a movie this year starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Pearson is a staff writer for the Daily Telegraph. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children.
Click on the audio link above to hear Pearson's interview on NPR .
You can read an excerpt of the book here.
