Many books on the shelves for adolescent reading subscribe to the idea that by age sixteen or seventeen, a female's primary developmental task is to be able to attract the attentions of a worthy male. Certainly achieving a feminine social role is one of the adolescent's tasks, and many high school girls do equate that task with attracting a male and subordinate all other concerns to it. It would be too restrictive for teachers, critics, or publishers to specify any particular concept of female identity as proper for the young adult audience, and yet those who have a concern for young adolescent literature should be aware of the problem and should look at the way books present female identity….
Known for flaunting formulas and writing honestly, Cormier produces works too strong for some adults who still try to offer youth a protected image of reality. But out of the same integrity that turns stomachs in The Chocolate War comes a beautiful portrait of a girl in the character of Kate Forrester in After the First Death. Cormier does not evade the sexual attraction issue. Kate and Miro develop an interest in each other that Cormier expected would become a love story…. But yielding to the forces at work in the novel, he wrote it differently. The point should be made clearly that sexual attraction or not is irrelevant; female identity, like male identity involves sexuality but is not to be reduced to sexuality.
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