And she won’t remove it for him, in an ending that’s upbeat, heartwarming and as empowering in 2021 as it was in 1974. Buddy Brader still wants to kiss Deenie even in her brace. There’s often a girl who gets picked on and a popular boy who’s ultimately not as awesome as advertised - though sometimes the cool guy is okay, too. Her narrators tend to be quiet-ish, with best friends who are faster or bolder, smarter or prettier and, sometimes, less moral. Blume gets precisely and amusingly inside the mind-set of protagonists who are neither saints nor villains (arguably, in the case of Jill Brenner in “Blubber”) but simply realistic ’70s girls (granted, of a certain background), who are simultaneously originals and types. There are questions of religion and God, of place and alienation, of social acceptance and rejection - the stuff of great literature. As I moved on to “Forever …” and “Blubber,” I noted that while the dilemmas are seen through the eyes of young narrators, neither the main characters nor the books themselves feel insignificant or fluffy.
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