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Dear Diary: You won't believe this ...

By CLAIRE DEDERER
Published July 9, 2006

Here is an entry from Margaret Sartor's diary, circa 1973: "Spent the night with Wanda. We did tests and found out we have ESP. Cooked a cake and put a fever thermometer in it and the mercury blew up."

You could write a whole lot, a novel even, about the desperate, hilarious waiting period known as preadolescence, and you wouldn't come up with something so fine and complete.

Photographer, teacher and editor Margaret Sartor has gathered together and published her diaries from 1972 to 1977, the years she spent in middle school and high school. As she acknowledges in her introduction, there's nothing special about these writings. She doesn't experience terrible abuse or terrific revelation, she doesn't achieve heights or fall to depths; she's just a regular kid.

Yet the author has put the thing together with irresistible confidence - she trusts that readers will be captivated by the details of her ordinary, goofy, bucktoothed life, and we are.

Margaret (it's impossible to refer to a 12-year-old by her last name) sketches in her home life on the banks of the Ouachita River in Monroe, La. - she calls the town Montgomery and changed everyone's name to protect their privacy. Her family consists of her father, Dr. Tom, her mother, a would-be artist, her two older sisters off at college, and Bill, her harum-scarum younger brother. (July 13, 1976: "Bill has a girlfriend. This seems to be improving his personal hygiene.")

When the diaries begin, Margaret has long, frizzy hair, a skinny frame, and serious concerns about entering high school. Her favorite person is her horse, Rex. (November 4, 1972: "I don't think it's strange to kiss your horse on the mouth.") Over the course of high school, she makes a classic ugly duckling transformation. By senior year she's elected homecoming queen and seems not even to care.

Along the way, she makes good grades, becomes something of a Jesus freak (remember those?), and falls in love many, many times. Her affection is like a crazy, off-kilter pendulum, swinging back and forth and over to the side: first to charismatic, evangelical Jackson, then to Mitch the jock, then to Tony the stoner, then back to Jackson, and around and around. She seems just as often to experience contempt as she does love for these manifestly imperfect boys.

"November 29: I don't want to bother anyone with how I feel. I see no use in it. But I'm thinking I may be losing control of my mind."

"November 30: Mitch wanted to give me an engagement ring for Christmas but I said no, so then he said he'd give me a promise ring but I said no."

"December 1: A lot of the time with Mitch, I'm a real ass."

The boys in the book come to seem interchangeable: "I'm beginning to believe that falling in love is like playing Blind Man's Bluff and whoever you touch is IT."

There is one boy, however, who's always right there with Margaret: her neighbor Tommy. Margaret and Tommy have grown up next door and have one of those rare boy-girl friendships that shine with a gemlike light. They share secrets and leave each other funny notes and sneak out in the middle of the night to walk under dark trees.

"June 14: Note from Tommy I found in an envelope on my pillow today: 'I suggest you meet me on the tennis court at 9 p.m. and wear your dancing shoes. Will you come? Take your time to decide. The fact that I know all your secrets and have access to a public address system shouldn't enter into the matter. - The Boy Next Door.' "

Sartor has edited these diaries cleverly, so that Tommy's self-realization makes a wonderful character arc alongside Margaret's more typical coming-of-age story. Sartor has looked past all the love stuff and seen the real narrative: an enduring and nourishing friendship.

Claire Dederer is a book reviewer who lives in Seattle.

[Last modified July 7, 2006, 11:28:32]