Subtitled THE PILLOW BOOK OF CORDELIA KENN this is a self portrait of a passionate girl who needs to write - in this case the story of her teenage years. It is the last novel in the loosely connected sequence of novels which began with BREAKTIME in 1978.
Aidan Chambers was born in County Durham in 1934. After national service in the Royal Navy he became a teacher and then, for seven years, a monk. His young adult novels have been widely acclaimed, with POSTCARDS FROM NO-MAN'S LAND winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the US Michael L Printz Award. With his wife Nancy he ran Signal magazine and he has served as the president of the School Library Association. His devoted services to children's literature were recognised by his receipt of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.
explores the heart and soul of a teenage girl with a rawness that
is both incredible and borderline alarming (alarming because the
author is a middle aged man and he writes about being a teenage
girl better than people who have actually experienced being one).
Think a longer, more structurally unique Catcher In The Rye if
Holden was a girl.
*Huffington Post*
A warm, poignant and sometimes funny novel . . . beautifully
written and cleverly crafted . . . A very readable book whose ease
belies its length and complexity
*Guardian*
Remarkable
*Independent*
Serious and self-absorbed, Cordelia is the antidote to the ditzy
heroines of a thousand pink covers but it is an addictive read,
even at 800 pages. Anyone who questions the validity of specialist
"teen" fiction should read it
*Sunday Telegraph*
Captures in story form the confusion, the ordinariness, the
excitement and the shape of everyday lives . . . Chambers has
delivered another provocative, informed, stimulating and
controversial book
*Inis*
As always, Chambers writes with the fierce intelligence and honesty
which distinguishes his work. If more novels of adolescence had
this quality and seriousness, we wouldn't risk losing those readers
who feel patronised by teenage fiction
*TES Teacher*
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