Growing Up with Books: Tales of a masturbating female - Paperback

by Melanie Brigid James (Author)

Megan Moran is worried. She is 12 years old and has found a steamy book. This sets her on a course of action that finds her struggling between the need to explore her sexuality through masturbation and the need to stop, what she figures, must be a sin. The book dips in and out of Megan's life at 13, 18, 23 and 28. We follow her path as a young teenager, as an older teenager becoming a nurse, on a Parisian working holiday, as a pregnant married woman, and as finally a new mother. Megan's sexual explorations reveal she is changing, and yet not changing. This book doesn't pull away from describing the actions and deep feelings involved in these explorations but it does take the reader on a journey that is often hidden away, even in contemporary fiction. This book was a finalist, with its original title "Smalltalk", in the Australian/Vogel Literary Award and was supported in its development by the Australia Council.