Kiss

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Gerry: Gerry is Sylvie's mother's boyfriend who she meets in a fictional community forum named "Not Waving But Drowning" after the Stevie Smith poem of the same name. He had a stroke two years ago rendering him physically disabled. He walks with the aid of a cane as he has a bad limp. Sylvie does not particularly like Gerry, thinking of him as dull and boring, and cannot see her mother's attraction to him.

This rural idyll is a far cry from her childhood. She grew up on a council estate in Kingston, the only child of parents in a loveless relationship. Her mother was a “terrible snob” who insisted that theirs was a better class of council estate and that she’d only ended up with Wilson’s father because all the good men were away fighting in the war. Meanwhile, he had a terrible temper. “He’d give you the silent treatment for weeks. It was quite scary. I think they were both very unhappy people.”This is not the first time she has touched on the subject: her 2007 novel Kiss is a mirror-image of Love Frankie, in which Sylvie can’t understand why Carl, her best friend and the boy next door, isn’t interested in her, just as boy-next-door Sammy longs to be more than friends with Frankie. (Attentive older readers might also have wondered about Cam, Tracy Beaker’s foster mother in the recent follow-up novel My Mum Tracy Beaker, who finds happiness with Tracy’s teacher Mary, “And why not!” Wilson said at the time.) So much has changed since the largely analogue days of Sleepovers. Not just in terms of technology, but attitudes. In the first book, Lily, the non-verbal, wheelchair-using sister of the narrator Daisy, is largely passive. In the new book, Lily is the hero – sassy, communicative (she communicates using the sign language Makaton) with a super-cool disabled best friend. The girls are the same age, but the setting is bang up to date. Now when the snotty bully Chloe is desperate to show off in front of her peer group, she does so by boasting that a TikTok influencer will be coming to her sleepover. It turns out the author has strong views on TikTok, and the digital world in general. Carl Johnson: Carl is Sylvie's best friend and next door neighbour, the son of Julia and Michael Johnson, and the younger brother of Jake by two years. He is very good looking, with blond hair that flops over his brow and brown eyes, and he is very intelligent. He has a love of all things glass, ever since his great aunt Esther gave him the Glass Boy as a present when he was five. He goes to Kingmere Grammar School, in Year Nine. Far less masculine than both his father or brother, he is often quiet and subdued and can have strong bouts of depression. He is revealed to be gay, and he has a crush on Paul. However, he still loves Sylvie, platonically.

Sylvie has a complex about being tiny, with her school knowing her as ‘titch’. Carl has bigger fish to fry, questioning his sexuality and feelings for his new best mate Paul, of course while Sylvie is still planning their marriage and while Paul and the rest of his peers are in the stupid teenage stage of using “that’s gay” as an insult.Good Parents: Mike and Jules, Carl's parents who handle Carl coming out sensitively and are also substitute parents to Sylvie. Wilson had considered Sleepovers one of her minor works – it’s a short book for readers aged seven and over. But the more she asked fans which of her books were their favourites, the more she realised how popular it was. Wilson has written well over 100 books, sold about 40m copies in the UK alone, been translated into 34 languages and was for years the most borrowed author from British libraries. Sleepovers is one of her five best bestselling books, and she believes there are two reasons. First, so many children love sleepovers. And second, it’s about something at the heart of young (and older) lives – friendship and friendship betrayed. This "love" between Rax and Prue wasn't real. I could feel that Prue felt it, but it wasn't love per se, instead, it was like this need to feel affection from both ways. I didn't feel that Rax reciprocated at all, though. He was at first this nice person, but he eventually grew distant and truly unlikeable as I progressed through the story. Icouldn't unerstand how a 20/30-something-year old kiss or fall in love with a14-year old. Moreover, I couldn't fathom why Prue would choose a a scruffy, married man with 2 kids over Toby? Toby was THERE! He was attractive and girls fawned over him and all. Rax, on the other hand, is just so...UGH! But of course it’s not about the actual content of Wilson’s books. It’s about how we think of our children and what we want their books to do. Worrying about the exposure of child readers to difficult issues is a privileged anxiety to have. It presupposes, after all, that they have not been so already; that home is happy, that parents are present, that life – taken in the round – is good. (It also suggests that the insight and empathy we supposedly want our children to have – the inculcation of which is one of the things that makes reading so vitally important – is a more tightly circumscribed desire than it first appears. Go so far and no further! lest other’s misery impinge upon your happiness. But that’s a discussion for another time.)

As a child the 'twist' was dramatic, but now as an older reader I can see the hints scattered through the text and realise that the reader was meant to come to this conclusion. My heart breaks for these children, it really does.I never ever thought I'd feel like this. I thought I'd just coast along somehow. I've always been careful...I felt so safe, you and me and our own private world. I didn't have a clue about what it's like to fall in love. It's frightening because it's so intense, it kind of takes you over. It's just like every stupid cliché, every silly song. You can't eat, you can't concentrate, you can't sleep. You just think about the other person all the time, even though you know it's crazy...I knew I didn't stand a chance...and yet I still sort of hoped that somehow it would happen.