Is Jenna Bush The New James Frey?
So galleys of First Daughter Jenna Bush's debut, Ana's Story: a Journey of Hope are floating around town, and all over town, people are dropping them in shock. Seems the book is not only "sexually frank" ("Whether or not you choose to wait until you're married or older to become sexually active, give yourself as much time as you need to make a well-thought-out and mature decision"), it's also... well-written? Maybe way too well-written?
Its language has a literary purity, and its narrative flows seamlessly back and forth between the interior and exterior lives of "Ana" and the people around her, all of whom vividly remember offhand details of events going back to their early childhoods or verbatim quotations from long-ago conversations. It reads, in other words, like a very good novel for young teens; it's hard to say even if "Ana" and the others are real people, since the author has changed all their names (to protect their privacy, she says) and doesn't even name the city and country they live in.
Hmm! We can't wait until we get our hands on a galley so we can judge for ourselves, but whoever is handling the book at the HarperCollins publicity department hasn't sent us a galley. That always makes us predisposed to view it more favorably!
