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| Goodbye, Louise Rennison – you captured the hilarious horror of girlhood | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| If my own feelings are anything to go by, the announcement of author Louise Rennison’s death yesterday will have hit many women in their 20s rather hard. Her books detailing the escapades of Georgia Nicholson and her “ace gang” of friends offered comfort, reassurance, and, above all, laughter. Georgia Nicholson was our Adrian Mole. | If my own feelings are anything to go by, the announcement of author Louise Rennison’s death yesterday will have hit many women in their 20s rather hard. Her books detailing the escapades of Georgia Nicholson and her “ace gang” of friends offered comfort, reassurance, and, above all, laughter. Georgia Nicholson was our Adrian Mole. |
| Rennison was a fearsomely funny writer. Picking up her first Georgia Nicholson adventure, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging (how very risqué it felt, in 1999) was a revelation to me at 12 or 13. Georgia attending a fancy dress party dressed as a stuffed olive too rotund to travel in her father’s car (he insists on driving at a snail’s pace alongside her all the way) felt like the ultimate embarrassing teenage experience, and I shed tears of laughter. (Laughing loudly and publicly, usually on the school bus, was an occupational hazard when reading Rennison’s books.) My friends and I all loved Georgia. How we cringed along with her, and how we empathised with her boy-crazy ways, her disdain of her flawed, kooky parents and her bafflement at the physical ups and downs of female puberty. | Rennison was a fearsomely funny writer. Picking up her first Georgia Nicholson adventure, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging (how very risqué it felt, in 1999) was a revelation to me at 12 or 13. Georgia attending a fancy dress party dressed as a stuffed olive too rotund to travel in her father’s car (he insists on driving at a snail’s pace alongside her all the way) felt like the ultimate embarrassing teenage experience, and I shed tears of laughter. (Laughing loudly and publicly, usually on the school bus, was an occupational hazard when reading Rennison’s books.) My friends and I all loved Georgia. How we cringed along with her, and how we empathised with her boy-crazy ways, her disdain of her flawed, kooky parents and her bafflement at the physical ups and downs of female puberty. |
| Related: Louise Rennison's greatest quotes ever | Related: Louise Rennison's greatest quotes ever |
| Rennison understood the unique, farcical horror of being a teenage girl. Throughout the books, Georgia’s insecurities are detailed in all their vivid, obsessional power. Her fixation on her nose; her belief that her breasts were too big and that her hair was rubbish. She is constantly embarrassing herself by doing and saying the wrong things in an attempt to impress, to carve out some place for herself in the world. | Rennison understood the unique, farcical horror of being a teenage girl. Throughout the books, Georgia’s insecurities are detailed in all their vivid, obsessional power. Her fixation on her nose; her belief that her breasts were too big and that her hair was rubbish. She is constantly embarrassing herself by doing and saying the wrong things in an attempt to impress, to carve out some place for herself in the world. |
| How easy it was too empathise with Georgia’s desperate desire to impress boys, her belief that everything she read in magazines should be taken as fact, until she eventually had the epiphany that most of it was, of course, total rubbish. “I am going to become a writer for Cosmo – you don’t have to make any sense at all,” she said. “Or maybe I’ll be a bloke, they don’t have to make sense either.” | How easy it was too empathise with Georgia’s desperate desire to impress boys, her belief that everything she read in magazines should be taken as fact, until she eventually had the epiphany that most of it was, of course, total rubbish. “I am going to become a writer for Cosmo – you don’t have to make any sense at all,” she said. “Or maybe I’ll be a bloke, they don’t have to make sense either.” |
| It was Rennison’s comic voice that made these books real for a generation of teenage girls. She just seemed to get the way of speaking, the cadence, the slang, the made-up patois that makes sense only to you and your friends. She was brilliant at conveying the sheer silliness of those years, channelling the hormones and hysteria, the gaggles of girls in their school uniforms laughing at nothing: it was so evidently clear in her mind’s eye. If you’ve been a teenage girl, you’ll be familiar with that giddy delirium, and are aware of how suddenly it can end when you’re struck down by the pain of having your best friend rate your nose only three out of ten. | It was Rennison’s comic voice that made these books real for a generation of teenage girls. She just seemed to get the way of speaking, the cadence, the slang, the made-up patois that makes sense only to you and your friends. She was brilliant at conveying the sheer silliness of those years, channelling the hormones and hysteria, the gaggles of girls in their school uniforms laughing at nothing: it was so evidently clear in her mind’s eye. If you’ve been a teenage girl, you’ll be familiar with that giddy delirium, and are aware of how suddenly it can end when you’re struck down by the pain of having your best friend rate your nose only three out of ten. |
| She also understood the blend of camaraderie and competitiveness that can characterise female friendships. Rennison told the story of teenage girls everywhere, and at a point when the post-feminist 90s – all lads’ mags and fake boobs and increasingly filthy music videos – had ramped the objectification of women up a notch. Amid all this, Rennison’s books were quietly feminist, implying that it was OK to be boy-crazy (because your raging hormones wouldn’t allow anything less) but not to define yourself completely by it, or to feel you have to kiss the ones whose snogging attempts recalled the slushing motions of washing machines. | She also understood the blend of camaraderie and competitiveness that can characterise female friendships. Rennison told the story of teenage girls everywhere, and at a point when the post-feminist 90s – all lads’ mags and fake boobs and increasingly filthy music videos – had ramped the objectification of women up a notch. Amid all this, Rennison’s books were quietly feminist, implying that it was OK to be boy-crazy (because your raging hormones wouldn’t allow anything less) but not to define yourself completely by it, or to feel you have to kiss the ones whose snogging attempts recalled the slushing motions of washing machines. |
| Related: Knickers? Snogging? Can we really transport humour across the pond? | Related: Knickers? Snogging? Can we really transport humour across the pond? |
| Besides, you have so much else going on: that often vicious loyalty specific to teenage female friendships (Rennison knew just how powerfully annoying another girl’s fringe could be), the eccentricities of younger siblings, the humiliating behaviour of parents who mistakenly believe themselves to still be young, and the solace of a mad cat. | Besides, you have so much else going on: that often vicious loyalty specific to teenage female friendships (Rennison knew just how powerfully annoying another girl’s fringe could be), the eccentricities of younger siblings, the humiliating behaviour of parents who mistakenly believe themselves to still be young, and the solace of a mad cat. |
| I didn’t know Louise Rennison but I felt – like many readers, I’m sure – that she knew me. At a time when funny female voices were thin on the ground, she was brilliantly, and defiantly, silly. The Vagenda, a tongue-in-cheek feminist blog I founded with my friend Holly, existed in no small part thanks to Rennison. But her influence was not just professional; throughout the hell of puberty, she taught me I was not alone, that it was OK to feel insecure and ugly, that sometimes your friends might not be all that nice, that it’s better to go for the boy who makes you laugh than the moody heartthrob, and never to put household bleach in your hair. | I didn’t know Louise Rennison but I felt – like many readers, I’m sure – that she knew me. At a time when funny female voices were thin on the ground, she was brilliantly, and defiantly, silly. The Vagenda, a tongue-in-cheek feminist blog I founded with my friend Holly, existed in no small part thanks to Rennison. But her influence was not just professional; throughout the hell of puberty, she taught me I was not alone, that it was OK to feel insecure and ugly, that sometimes your friends might not be all that nice, that it’s better to go for the boy who makes you laugh than the moody heartthrob, and never to put household bleach in your hair. |
| Rennison’s death is a huge loss to young adult fiction, and I have no doubt to her family and friends, but I know that her funny novels will continue to speak to girls for generations. As Rennison wrote: “She who laughs last laughs the laughingest.” | Rennison’s death is a huge loss to young adult fiction, and I have no doubt to her family and friends, but I know that her funny novels will continue to speak to girls for generations. As Rennison wrote: “She who laughs last laughs the laughingest.” |