Girl, (nearly) sixteen, absolute torture door Sue Limb

Title:  Girl (nearly) 16 – Absolute torture
Author: Sue Limb
Publisher: Bloomsbury publishers
Year of publication: 2005
Place of publication: London
Number of pages: 283

I have read the book ‘Girl (nearly) 16 – Absolute torture’, written by Sue Limb. When we were searching a book in the library of our school, this one immediately caught my eye because of the bright colours and glitters on the cover of the book. The book represents the summer of Jess. She’s almost sixteen years old and she’s happier than ever because everything has fallen into place. School is over for two months, she finally got together with Fred and he has a surprise for her: Fred had gathered all his money that he earned in the restaurant where he works as a waiter and bought two tickets for the fancy music festival Riverdene. Disaster! Jess tried to hide her horror. Her mum frowned. ‘What’s wrong, sweetheart? It’s what you’ve always wanted. A trip to see your dad!’

When her mother suddenly reveals that Jess will spend two weeks with her dad in Cornwall, she tries to hide her disappointment. Normally, she’d love to visit her dad but what an extremely bad timing! So she’s forced to go on a road-trip to Cornwall with her mother and grandmother. Theoretically, her grandfather is accompanying them too, but in an urn in the purse of her grandmother. Jess tells the whole lot to Fred and she secretly hopes that he’ll sell the tickets, but he doesn’t get her subtle hints so he keeps the entry permits. The only thing that can conform Jess, is the fact that Fred promised to text her daily. From the first second they leave, Jess starts to ponder about her lover. She’s scared that the beautiful girls who work in the restaurant will lunge at him or that he’ll bump into her best friend Flora on the street and that one thing leads to another. One evening, she receives a text from Fred saying ‘Disaster, managed to drop a big dish of crème caramel all down Charlotte’s cleavage.’ When Jess reads this, she’s furious and decides to ignore him. But after a few days, she couldn’t bear it longer so she sent a ferocious text to Fred about how egocentric he was, texting her about some other girl’s cleavage. Jess is depressed but then, Fred texts her back: ‘Charlotte is fifty and our boss, dumbo. Her cleavage is about as appealing as a crevasse in Antarctica.’ Jess is relieved. But this feeling doesn’t last long … a few hours later, she notices that she ran out of phone credit and the worrying about Fred starts all over again. When they arrive at Jess’ dad’s house, her father has to reveal something. He tells her that he’s in love with another man. He expected Jess to be shocked and upset, but Jess remains calm. In fact, she’s happy that her father has found a new love. Jess doesn’t expect more surprises, but the next day Fred is all of a sudden knocking on the door! He couldn’t miss Jess for another moment, so he had packed his bags and left Riverdene. Jess was blissful that her summer finally got its happy ending. Sue Limb did a great job by writing this sequel of ‘Girl, 15: Charming but insane’. It is unbelievable in which way she describes the agony, ecstasy but also the embarrassment of a teenager. With its 283 pages, the book is rather thick but the large font makes it pleasant to read. I like the fact that you notice in the use of words that Jess and her family and friends are living in Britain. For example, they’re eating scones, drinking tea and paying with ponds. Jess calls her mother ‘mum’ in stead of the American equivalent ‘mom’ and they are on ‘holiday’ in stead of the American ‘vacation’.