Sybil Davison has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys.
If you’ve ever wondered what all the controversy over this book is about and why it continues to rank among the most banned books in school districts across the country, just open it up and read the first line. Of course, you have to keep in mind that the novel was published in 1975 and directed specifically to young readers. Were this merely an example of mainstream fiction designed to appeal to readers who routinely turn novels into best sellers, nobody much would probably care. In fact, so few people would probably care that the book might well have been forgotten by now. Instead, it retains its value as controversial publication. One simply did not write books for readers not yet out of high school that opens with a line like using language like. One still doesn’t in the world of YA fiction, for the most part.
"I know … because I love you too," I whispered into his chest. Saying it the first time was the hardest. There's something so final about it. The second time I sat up and said it right to him. "I love you, Michael Wagner."
"Forever?" he asked.
"Forever," I said.
Ding, ding, ding, we have a title! This is where the title of the story comes into play and from this point forward it becomes one of those few examples where the title of the novel actually becomes central to its meaning. The story has turned plenty of otherwise rational adults into reactionary lunatics salivating over the potential to be successful in driving it off the curriculum or out of the school library due to its frank depiction of teenage sexuality. You can’t blame the author for this since she picked a title that is doing its level best to inform everybody what her story is really all about. It’s not the encroaching awareness of burgeoning sexuality that drives teenagers to have sex which parents should be concerned about. That is just biology working its magic and nothing can be done to stop that.
The real problem, the books suggests, and one that parents can intervene upon is the conflict between the biological evolution of sexual production organs and the psychological development of the mind. Biology gets such a big head start on psychology that by the time it finally catches up—if it ever catches up—it is already too late. The concept of “forever” means something substantially different to two young immature bodies with the urge to sexually couple than it will to those same two people ten or twenty years later or even just five later. The only way to alter the consequence of this conflict with through active education which just so happens to also be the thing which most parents wanting to ban the book also oppose or are taking on themselves.
I wanted to tell him that I will never be sorry for loving him. That in a way I still do—that maybe I always will. I'll never regret one single thing we did together because what we had was very special. Maybe if we were ten years older it would have worked out differently. Maybe. I think it's just that I'm not ready for forever.
By the end, there is another conflict in maturity that must be dealt with. It still resides in Katherine, of course, but she had made a big movement forward toward reconciling the biological with the psychological. Michael, on the other hand, remains for the moment still trapped in the place where Katherine used to be. It is here that the nature of the title as the real driving force of the narrative is encapsulated as the term “forever” now takes on a quite different connotation than when she first uses it. There is still quite a long way to go for Katherine, but the book is all about revealing that sexuality is an evolutionary process complicated by the fact that it exists within a structure somehow not really built with all that much efficiency of design.
