robot_mel: (Chinese)
( Jun. 26th, 2008 01:52 pm)
对不起,我没写中文很多日! 上个周末很好玩儿,星期五我朋友[livejournal.com profile] nimstar来了我们家去吃了晚饭。现在她孕育孕了六个月,她已经很大!孕育我们没喝酒。星期六我,我老公和[livejournal.com profile] silkyraven坐公共汽车去Invocation。我看见很多朋友,我喝了四杯啤酒,聊天儿,跳舞,很好玩儿。但是九十二点四十五分我们回家因为[livejournal.com profile] silkyraven[livejournal.com profile] beluosus觉得非常累。星期日我们一起看了Formula 1 Grand Prix。然后我们看了两个Dvd,十点钟我们睡觉。

星期一我觉得很病了!我不知道中文,migrane, 很不好!

星期二我觉得也很病。

星期三我觉得很累,但是我看了两本书,很好!

今天星期四我觉得好了,下班我要散步回家。
I should start by saying that I saw part of the TV show the BBC made out of this when I was 16/17. At the time I was still very much a christian and terrified by the prospect that in all likelihood I was quite gay. This however did not stop me from getting crushes on a lot of girls, including Sammy who used to run the Christian Union with me, and her sister. One evening I was over at Sammy's sitting downstairs watching TV with her sister, who was watching Oranges are not the only fruit. So I was very pleased to see there was a cute girl called Melanie on the tele, who also had long brown curly hair, (though at the time mine was dyed red) and who also went to prayer meetings with her best friend. Imagine my confusion when they started to get naked! Needless to say I tried to sneak and watch the rest of the series but was TERRIFIED my mum would catch me and start asking questions.

Eventually I was able to put all this behind me and always thought I should read the book, but given how traumatic I view most of growing up I put it off for ages. But I started to read it just before bed on Tuesday night and finished it yesterday. It was good fun, and not traumatic. I was not expecting it to be so light-hearted and enjoyable. In a way it was great to see the events that I found so troubling to be portrayed as more light-hearted.

Now as it's a book about a girl growing upon in an evangelical household who’s secretly gay, you'd expect there to be a lot of coincidences, but there were also a lot of unnecessary ones that amused me greatly. The only book her mother liked, besides the bible was also Jane Eyre, she had a female friend she wouldn't mention, their was a boyfriend in the past she wouldn't talk about but made her think men were only after one thing and so on.

It also reminded me that not everything about my religious upbringing was bad; there was also Fuzzy Felt and Scripture Union books. Of course [livejournal.com profile] silkyraven mentioned that Fuzzy Felt was not intrinsically religious, apparently her sets had cars! Whereas I'm sure I remembered ours having Biblical themes! In a way the mother character was a lot more like my grandmother than my mother, and as such I really think my dad should read it.

There were also bits I found that didn't match with my experiences and so left me feeling a bit puzzled. I was quite surprised by how quickly the girls fell into a sexual relationship, (wish that had happened to me!) and that they didn't realise this was the "sexual perversion" everyone was always going on about. Perhaps because it was set earlier they were more sheltered, but in the churches I went to, and the camps we went to, it was always MOST explicit that any kind of same sex relationship was the work of Demons and Evil!

It was different, and also a lovely relief, to see that there were other lesbians in the town, and even in the church, and that most people viewed her mother as being slightly nuts. (Something that never occurred to me growing up).

I was also surprised by the quietness of the end. But I did like it a great deal, I'm not sure if I'll read more by the same author or not. But I would definitely recommend it.
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