Love Me Little

by Amanda Vail

Love Me Little is the story of a young Miss who cannot afford to miss any of the unusual experiences that, so the novels say, French girls of her own age always have. Emily is fifteen when she returns one term to her expensive boarding and finds that Sue, captain of the hockey team, has had an 'Interesting Experience'. Emily is determined she is going to find out about sex first hand—she would 'make it' by the end of summer or bust. This is about her efforts—and their results!

Genres: American

110 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

Reviews

[Clare Harvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this novella in a second hand bookshop, and bought it mainly because I love these old orange penguin books. Published in 1959, it's a coming-of-age (or not - depending on how your opinion on how it ends, but I won't give away spoilers) novel which was purportedly written by a 17-year-old.
The protagonist is a 15 year old girl, on her summer holidays from boarding school, who, together with her best friend, is desperate to lose her virginity before the summer's out.
I thought the narrative voice was perfect - the teenager affecting cynicism - and I loved the portrayal of a clever, cool youngster, still a child at heart, teetering on the brink of womanhood.
However, having read the other reviews, I now realise this was written by a man. I should be applauding the author's skill at conveying a teenage girl's perspective, but somehow it spoils the book a bit for me. I loved the idea that this had been authored by a real teenager. Now I just feel a bit as if I've been scammed.

[Manda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very strange little book. Not unlikeable but odd when you realise that it's a book about an adolecent girl finding her way with her first sexual experiences which is actually written by a man. That said it could have been a lot stranger but was quite sensitively written.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, sparkling, charming and hilarious coming of age tale. Unfortunately it appears Amanda is the pseudonym of a middle aged man, but the book is great.

[Esdaile · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Love me Little" attempts the dificult task of being funny and it fails. The greater part of the story which is so short as to qualify it as a long short story, is taken up with trying to make the reader laugh and it hardly raised a smile in my case. Perhaps it was more successful with other readers. The main characters are two nubile young poor-little-rich-girl virgins intent on what would be called today "getting laid" and this is so implausible for the fifties in which it was written, that the thought occurs that maybe this is the relfection of what boys were up to and therby making a point that society was operating with deeply entrenched double standards. The point is perhaps reinforced by the writer being a man posing as a fifteen year old girl. The tale might have been more entertaining if it had been more convincing, at least so far as the characters of the girls are concerned. They are extraordinarily precocious in terms of their philosophising and knowledge of literature, which is juxtaposed with their undemanding salacious search for a man at virtually any price. But this is to give salaciousnes sa bad name. The girls and apparently the writer, associate success in popping the proverbial with social success, or gain perhaps the fact that being uncovered iand exposed in that respect is making another comment on social double-standards. If so, the point was no made sufficiently forcibly for me. The novel fails to be pornographic (I am not certain if it was intended to be but it gives the impression of trying to be generally vaguely shocking) and faills to be humourous. To use a word more popular in the fifties than today, the story is faintly but unmistakably smutty, meaning offering cheap thrills for no very good reason other than exactly the cheap thrill of shocking and sensationalisng at a low key level and then tries perhaps to make money ins o doing, and if that is the case, I feel that the author has too many private jokes being utilised in writing this tale but no very good ones to offer his/her reading public. The dreary impression left by the non-adventures of the anti-heroines is that superficiality pays. The male characters are not deserving of pity however, since their idelaism is as hollow as the conversation which keeps everyone moving on. The dingy American materialism which pervades this depressing short story is encapsulated in a smarmy father who idolises the American dream of making money from anything so long as it is money and whose affection for his daughter is restrained enough as not to be scandalous but unctiously devoted enough to be faintly, that word again, smutty.

[Julie Loy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked the settings -New York City and Long Island in the summer but when I found out it was written by a man and not a 15 year old girl I thought it somewhat distasteful! However, I got over that and actually enjoyed it! The fact that no mention of the possibility of getting pregnant was made especially as it was written in 1957 was unrealistlc and felt as though it was really written from a man's point of view.