This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

This book is like a roller-coaster ride. If you are or have ever been a teenage girl then everything in it will make total sense to you. It does take a mature reader and one who really loves to read to truly appreciate the genius that is This Is All. It has been a long time since I found a book that really touched me on such a deeply personal level.

In the beginning, I started the book with no expectations, only to be amazed by the end of it. Not only is this story extremely realistic in the adolescent sense, it also had many other lessons to teach about life in general. It was beautifully written, funny, witty, and I'm glad that I picked this book up, despite its thickness (which may ultimately seem a little intimidating to impatient readers). But read it!! You will not be disappointed...

I bought this book straight out of the book store, mainly because I liked the cover (I'll admit it I'm very shallow when it comes to book covers), description, and sheer size. I'm not a fan of light reading. I honestly didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. Getting over the lenghty sexual passages, I discovered a character more real than I'd ever encountered. It was like a book made of my thoughts and emotions. Of course, this might have something to do with that I'm also a sixteen year old girl. In short, I adored it, the prose, everything. It was the kind of book you can open to any page and be entertained. You really have to digest it though, if you read it from start to finish. I cried, I laughed, it was everything a book should be.

There are two complaints people seem to make about this book - that it is too long, and that they don't believe that what happens to Cordelia and her reactions are realistic. To the first, if you are a lazy reader, sure, it is a very long book, but everything in it is there for a reason, is an essential part of what makes Cordelia a completely real person. Which is my answer to the second complaint - Cordelia is completely real. If you can't realate to Cordelia I'm sorry you were never in love at a young age. I can only imagine that those critics have lost all touch with who they were as teenagers and simply can't temember what it was like. I find it remarkable that a seventy year old man could write such an incredibly accurate book about a teenage girl. This book runs eerily parallel to my life at that age, and I reacted much the same, even down to having an affair with an older man, so I can only repeat: these things happen and young girls do feel like Cordelia. This book is amazing.

Award-winning author Aiden Chambers presents This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn, a unique work of fiction in that it is not told in the traditional narrative style of a novel; instead, its story is rendered as a "pillow book" or collection of notes recording poems, emotions, daily impressions, letters, stories, ideas, and descriptions, compiling the life of a pregnant nineteen-year-old girl who wishes to preserve and pass on her memories to her unborn child. This Is All ranges the gamut of experience, from early friendships and thoughts on classical literature to simple amusements, teenage love, and the heady pleasures of sex. A verbose, descriptive, and often intimate portrait of all the good and bad in a soon-to-be mother's life.