When Judy Blume started writing in the late 1960s, the young-adult category was dominated by what were known as “problem novels”, said Katy Waldman in The New Yorker: books that “took up social issues, such as drugs and teen pregnancy”. In her work, Blume embraced contentious topics – masturbation, teen sex, “friendship drama” – but framed these not as “problems”, but as ordinary parts of adolescent experience. In the process, she pioneered a new genre: “realism for young people”.
Mark Oppenheimer, a religious-studies scholar in his 50s, may seem a somewhat incongruous chronicler of the life of the “patron saint of getting your period”. But his book is well researched and often “compelling”, even if it contains few genuinely explosive revelations (the best may be that the original draft of Blume’s adult novel, “Wifey”, included a scene “in which a dog performs oral sex on the main character”).
Blume’s early life, in the “distinctive milieu” of a secular Jewish family in post-war New Jersey, “reads like a Philip Roth novel”, said Meghan C. Kruger in The Wall Street Journal. The daughter of a dentist and a homemaker, she “grew up around adults who devoured books and could speak frankly about the human body”. Aged 21, she married a law graduate, John Blume, and soon found herself with two young children, domestic help, and a “poolside perch at the country club”. But she was emotionally and creatively unfulfilled – and so signed up for a class in writing for children.
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After “nearly two years collecting rejections”, she had her breakthrough in 1970 with “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret”, the story of a “sixth-grade girl who navigates puberty through daily conversations with the divine”.
I vividly remember, aged 12 or 13, reading Blume’s “taboo-busting” 1975 novel “Forever”, said Lucy Bannerman in The Times. “Periods! Orgasms! A penis named Ralph! You didn’t get that kind of adventure in ‘Jill’s Gymkhana’.” The “audacious glimpse into adulthood” afforded by her books helps explains why they’ve sold over 90 million copies (timing helped: she began writing as cheap paperbacks were becoming widely available).
Blume, now 88, initially co-operated for this biography, but relations soured after the first draft. It’s not clear why. Though Oppenheimer delves into her personal life, including her ill-fated second marriage, he treats his subject “with the seriousness he clearly believes she deserves”, in a book that is thoughtful, but ultimately not that revealing.
