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WRITE NAKED by Peter Gould

WRITE NAKED

by Peter Gould

Pub Date: June 13th, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-374-38483-8
Publisher: Melanie Kroupa/Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Nudity, first love and global warming mesh—sometimes awkwardly—in this novel, the author’s second (after Burnt Toast, 1971). Seventeen-year-old Victor meets homeschooled, unconventional Rose Anna at his uncle’s cabin in the Vermont woods. Both have mothers who were part of the Vermont commune movement and both have taken to heart the adage “You have to be naked to write.” Victor has an old typewriter with which he chronicles their budding romance and the minutiae of his own life; Rose Anna prefers a fountain pen and homemade ink to script an earnest but pedantic allegory about global warming. Their blossoming romance and Victor’s growing awareness of the world and of other people come across as genuinely sweet and sometimes funny. The message within Rose Anna’s story, however, as well as her obsession with a tragic commune fire long ago, sadly dilute Victor’s narrative and result in an uneven read. Still, it is refreshing to find teen characters who can be naked in a cabin together and still want to write. (Fiction. 14 & up)