YOUNG MOTHER

by Josephine Kamm ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 30, 1965

The author has tried hard to provide a cautionary tale for teenage girls about unwanted pregnancy. She has missed her American audience by approximately the distance between a London suburb and, say, Chicago. Pat Henley, a 16-year-old English girl, very young for her age and apparently a little numb in the taste buds, submitted to the advances of a married man after unwittingly downing much hard cider at an unchaperoned house party. Pat's father had deserted the family when she was six, her mother was a hard-nosed business woman who had supported her three children, and Pat, the middle one, was rather neglected. All these causal influences get sprayed across the page. They are valid (more valid than that cider device) but never developed. The attempted novel becomes a recitation of effects--Pat's condition and her mother's reputation; her older sister's engagement; and her younger brother's status with his peers. Pat comes to term in a Church of England home for unwed mothers, and if the drabness of it all is Dickensian, the vegetation of characters there is not. Pat's unrealistic decision to keep her son and her hard try at supporting him should be touching, but the flaccid writing prevents that. There is a confusion of implication here. While it is definitely a message book, the message is not clear. Go to church? Swear off cider? Adoption is the best recourse for unwed young mothers? All of these, and a few more. It's unfocused formula fiction, very British in dialogue and social setting. Henry Gregor Felsen's Two and the Town (Scribners, 1952) treated the same problem more honestly and arrived at a much different conclusion.

Pub Date: Aug. 30, 1965

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Duell, Sloan & Pearce

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1965

Categories: FICTION