My Lockdown Books: Fourteen

How dated is this cover?!  I never even thought about it when I first read See You Thursday by Jean Ure because I was a teenager in the 1980s.  It’s one of the books I found for myself in Lossiemouth Library.  Not long after I read it, the second book, After Thursday, was published and I read it too.  Meanwhile I had discovered more of Jean Ure’s books and thoroughly enjoyed them.  In fact, in my current collection I have kept three sets of hers.  As well as Marianne and Abe’s story (which was completed in Tomorrow is Also a Day), I have the two Sebastian books, If It Weren’t for Sebastian (I appreciated the subjunctive even as a teenager) and Always Sebastian, and the ballet duo, A Proper Little Nooryeff and You Win Some, You Lose Some.

Two of these books were published when I was an adult, a youngish adult, and not at a time when I was specifically collecting children’s books.  However, I bought a copy of Tomorrow is Also a Day and Always Sebastian out of my meagre salary.  That, I think, demonstrates how much I enjoyed Jean Ure’s writing.

I chose Thursday for my lockdown random selection because it was the first book by Jean Ure I read.  These days I don’t suppose it would appear unusual to a teenage reader but it has a blind male lead and a tentative age-gap relationship.  At fourteen or so I found it different enough to be significant although I can’t say that it impacted on my reaction to the book.