'By day, we were at school learning logarithms, but by night - in the back of cars, down behind the Ace-of-Spades Hotel and on Cronulla Beach - we paid off our friendship rings?
Puberty Blues is about young people - and the irrelevance of home, school and adults to their lives. The gang, the surf and the beach make up their real world. The rules are tough, initiation essential and approval by the top chicks and spunks is all that counts.
Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey's account of adolescence is horrifying yet hilarious. It will appal the complacent. It will outrage those who insist on patronizing the young. It will jolt well-meaning adults into a re-examination of the ways they attempt to protect young people from themselves. It should be welcomed by those who have been seeking to set up a dialogue between the generations.
Puberty Blues gives us the facts no one wants to face. It is a deadly accurate account of the way many young people live, and some of them die.
Or at best survive.