How the world turns. Twenty years exactly after Beverly Cleary's Fifteen … was first published, in which it took Our Hero 174 out of 175 pages to kiss Our Heroine, appears Forever … by Judy Blume … in which the first kiss is accomplished on page 3. By page 20 they're discussing virginity ("No boy had ever come right out and asked me …"), and by page 25 the groping has begun.

In fact, this story is about first-time intercourse, explicitly described, just as Fifteen was about a first, explicitly described, date. That's the change. Otherwise things haven't altered too much. Judy Blume's style has colloquial ease, humour and just enough romantic patina to give the everyday … a semblance of the desirable.

Certainly it is good to have sex written about without the embarrassment and pertness we've been used to in books for young people. But until there have been a number of Forevers I doubt...