MEMOIRS OF AN EX-PROM QUEEN
By
No Miss America was ever quite so turned on by the incomparable excitement-gratification of being chosen ""Basketball Queen of Baybury Heights"" -- Ohio -- at fifteen. That was queen-for-a-day-or-rather-evening Sasha Davis who grew up there swinging between a passionate concern for how she looked alternating with an equally passionate contempt for her body (all those humiliating pore-by-crevasse manifestations). This is tagged as the ""first feminist"" novel that was ever published which of course it isn't but Sasha's memoirs do reflect contemporary preoccupations -- often difficult to separate from her experiences -- namely attempting to retain her independence, or trying to avoid being a love object (translate -- sex objective), or managing to assert the beauty of her mind (momentarily appreciated by a professor although the Heloise-Abelard relationship quickly becomes something else again). Mostly you'll remember those experiences and they are enterprising and drastic (a dose; an abortion; etc.) including one on-and-off marriage cum what a shrink calls ""activities"" until she finally settles down and has two babies and -- in her child-centered entrapment -- sometimes fills up with resentments ""like a Hoover bag."" The last scenes are certainly funny. . . . As for Sasha, she's got a sassy charm even if the book ends up being what she's gone to such pains to deny -- a plaything.