[Forever …] is a story as told by the adolescent heroine, about an affair with another seventeen-year-old that germinates, burgeons and finally goes to seed. As a narrative technique, talking straight from the adolescent's mouth can also act as camouflage for slack writing, not entirely avoided here. Although it may be in character for the narrator to rhapsodize about eyes that are "very dark, with just a rim of green and other times they sparkle and are greenish-gray all over", it is still no less tedious to read. So if the author does manage to catch the almost inexorable egotism of some adolescents at this age, it is at the cost of producing a dull novel about two very dull young people, told in prose of the same soggy consistency as the used tissues that play such an important part in the couple's post-amatory techniques.

But it is just...