![]() ![]() With mixed Jewish and Christian heritage, Margaret Simon has to contend with spiritual confusion, a move to the suburbs, and her teacher mother becoming a housewife all while desperately wanting her breasts to develop and her period to start. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is probably Blume’s most beloved novel, finally adapted for the screen nearly 50 years after the book’s publication and directed by The Edge Of Seventeen’s Kelly Fremon Craig. The wall-to-wall interviews, tributes, and other coverage of the new film and documentary are a testament to her ongoing relevance, and to the fact that teenage girls need her more than ever. But slowly, hearing from friend after friend that “I do not know how I would have coped with being 13 without her”, I began to see her work as something even more special: a spiderweb of support that bonded every reader of the more than 90m books she has sold. Watching the new documentary about Blume and the upcoming film adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, I felt almost betrayed as I saw that my intimate parasocial relationship with her was shared by so many other people. I grew up in Sudan and then Brighton in the 90s and 00s, but never questioned the fact that these stories, set in the US of the 70s and 80s, were written for me – gifts from Blume to guide me through my specific struggles. ![]() From the crippling insecurities of being 10 in Otherwise Known as Sheila The Great to virginity loss in Forever …, Blume’s novels shepherded me through adolescence like a beloved family member. ![]()
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