2007-10-04 For the sake of your sanity, do not read this book

Having this book thrust upon me by my girlfriend, I felt compelled to stand out from the crowd of other reviewers, who seem to have read a completely different book to the one that I just finished off. The book I read made me wonder whether or not the author has indeed ever been a teenager, or if he had gone through some sort of larval/cucoon phase, and this is just his personal fantasy of what his teenage years would have been like if he hadn't been busy pupating.

Leaving aside, for a moment, the one-dimensional characters and the clumsy attempt at being "multicultural" with the kid with the arranged marriage, let me instead focus on the real issue.

...Why does this author specialize in writing about underage teenagers getting popped?

Why has nobody picked up on this?

One comes to the conclusion that this is not "teen lit". For a start, everyone knows that "teen" lit is read by 11 year olds, and no-one in their right mind would give this piece of literary offal to a child. On the other hand, no real teenagers will ever read it either. They're either too busy with their guns, their drugs and their hippity-hop music, or if they're moderately intelligent they're reading *real* adult fiction.

The Last Virgin is a truly terrible book. I am honestly very glad that I am not a teenage reader, because I can't imagine anything else making me feel more isolated and alone. It foists upon the unwary reader a false image of normality, and is about an accurate depiction of adolescent life as "teenage mutant ninja turtles".