Anita And Me (Anita And Me - Meera Syal)

Member Name: zusy

Product:	Anita And Me - Meera Syal
Date:	08/07/00 (280 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brings back memories of childhood, very funny, well described, very realistic - would make a great film!

Disadvantages: Tiny bit slow at times, tends to leap about from topic to topic and back again - but not so much as to make this a bad book

Meena wants to be normal, she wants fishfingers and miniskirts and Jackie magazine. She yearns to be popular like her idol, Anita - local tough girl and mouthy gangleader. This proves to be somewhat difficult, though, as Meena is the only child of the only asian family in Tollington.

Anita And Me is a hugely entertaining, moving account of growing pains we can all relate to. Syal manages to grasp something of the strangeness and violence of childhood, at a time of great change. She brings back memories of Zoom lollies and space-hoppers, bags of sticky sweets that lock your jaws together and most of all the longing to fit in and be one of the gang.

I love the way she describes things - you can see everything immediately in your mind, as if you had lived in that town all your life and known every single one of it's inhabitants. I felt it was a little slow and jumped around a bit too much at times, but generally this is a great book to make you smile and remember and empathise deeply.

Summary: