Secret Scribbled Notebooks

Joanne Horniman

Allen&Unwin

1904442714

Oct 2005

Another addition to the already vast array of ‘coming-of-age diary’ novels written for teenagers, Secret Scribbled Notebooks tells of seventeen year-old Australian Kate O’Farrell, who is about to finish her exams, leave school and enter the world as a fully fledged proper grown-up. We follow her musings as she struggles to come to terms with her identity, (her parents abandoned her to be brought up by the owner of a guesthouse) falls in love with a ‘Russian Prince’ who lives in a garage and works in a second-hand bookshop, and adapts to a new life as an aunt when her older sister becomes a single parent.
It is always a struggle for authors of diary style novels to steer clear of becoming too prosaic and overly concerned with the tedium of everyday life. Writers such as Jennifer Donnelly and Dodie Smith handle it masterfully by the beauty of their writing, the lyricism and unique voices of their characters. Louise Rennison injects a huge burst of energy into her novels with spectacular wit and comic timing.
Sadly, on these counts, Joanne Horniman fails. There is nothing unique or engaging about this book or its characters, and by the end of the novel, I felt like nothing had really been achieved, realised, or concluded.