If you had found Jennifer Niven in the looming halls of Richmond, Indiana's lone high school in 1985, she would have had enormous hair and been wearing her favorite yellow Esprit shirt. She would have been flirting with Tommy Wissel, and passing notes to her best friend Joey about whether Dean Waldemar was going to ask her to the dance. And her last name would have been McJunkin, because Niven is the pen name she planned to use whenever she finally graduated and became a famous writer/actress in some big city far, far away from farms, tractors, mullets, and food festivals.
In her entertaining and heartfelt memoir, Jennifer takes readers back to that thrilling, excruciating, amazing, unnerving, awkward, and unforgettable time -- high school -- when life's greatest problems revolved around saying and doing the right thing, wrestling with geometric theorems, fretting over a bad hair day, waiting for the weekend's parties, trying not to die of boredom, and dying to be noticed by the most popular boy in school. It was a time of feeling fearless and invincible, with miles of firsts still to come.
From meeting her best friend for life in Mr. Foos's first-period geometry class to partying one last time before college -- when not just the cool kids but the hoods, the geeks, and the normal kids gathered together to say good-bye -- Jennifer shares the funny, poignant, and silly stories of a simpler time and place. Irresistibly charming and utterly true, The Aqua Net Diaries is one girl's unique yet undeniably universal survival story of the best years of her life.
My thoughts
Jennifer Nevins’ memoir takes us back to high school in the 80s. Although, I am older am high school, years were in the 70s, it is interesting to see that the high school experience is not all the same for us. Jennifer believes that she Is not part of the popular crowd but an outsider. I don’t sense that. It is also remarkable how she kept letters and notes from that period to help create the stories of her youth. Contacting old school chums, to interview for the book also makes me believe that high school was a big and important part of her life. But it was still high school, however ordinary it may have been. She is a very good writer but reading this memoir didn’t leave any long lasting impression.
Disclosure: This book was borrowed from my local library.
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