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Elizabeth Clarry is not a real teenager. She has a Teletubbies quilt cover and doesn't own any makeup. Worse still, she has never been drunk, and her best friend has totally vanished. The best thing for her to do would be to climb into the refrigerator and disappear.
But Elizabeth doesn't disappear. Instead, the reader of Feeling Sorry for Celia follows her path through the struggles of finding and losing her best friend, developing new friendships and figuring out her father.
Elizabeth and her friends Celia and Christina encounter many of the problems of adolescence - first love, sex, conformity and family dynamics. Author Jaclyn Moriarty manages to balance the seriousness of these subjects with just the right measure of humour and whimsy to make the book both entertaining and educational.
Feeling Sorry for Celia is certain to appeal to 13 to 16 year olds and is as suitable for class reading lists as it is for private reading/. The only drawback for class study purposes is that its innovative letter format would be a little difficult for oral reading sessions.
This format, however, is part of the appeal of the book, with the story told through letters, notes and postcards exchanged between Elizabeth and the other characters, with delightful epistles from such fictitious sources as the Manager of the Society for people Who are Definitely Going to Fail High School.
Feeling Sorry For Celia is truly an outstanding piece of adolescent fiction.
Feeling Sorry for Celia by Jaclyn Moriarty
Pan Macmillan, 2000
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