Sweet Valley High, according to 19 year old Anna
We don’t have an episode for you this week, but we hate to leave you empty handed, so here’s a look at a zine that Anna wrote, way back in the summer of 1994, extolling the virtues of Sweet Valley High.
Little did she know that her mission to convince more people to join the SVH madness would continue to this day, with all of you lovely people! Enjoy!
A Sweet Valley High fan speaks.
Well, I might as well admit it. I am nineteen years and three-and-a-half weeks old and I still read Sweet Valley High books. Well, maybe I shouldn’t say “still”. I didn’t read SVH books at the normal time. When I was thirteen, I sneered at the likes of Sweet Valley, being a horrendous literary snob who preferred to weep over “Maurice” by E.M. Forster than the death of lovely Regina Morrow in “On the Edge”. How stupid I was! But believe me, I’ve made up for all that lost time since.
It started when my younger sister Jenny returned from a visit to a friend’s house bearing three SVHs. Their owner never saw them again… Once we began to read we were hooked, hooked on the melodramatic and frankly preposterous storylines, hooked on the taking-it-all-so-seriously style, and hooked, oh, so very hooked, on the most farcical heroines ever created.
I mean, of course, Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, “five foot six of adorable California girl”, identical from their “sun-streaked blonde hair” to their “aqua eyes” (do you know anyone with aqua eyes?) to the dimple in their perfect cheeks. But while Elizabeth is “loyal, dependable and honest” her tempestuous twin is the opposite… as proof of herwildness, she NEVER WEARS A WATCH! She is obviously a force to be reckoned with.
There are, as I write, nearly a hundred of these books. I haven’t read them all…yet. The end of each one is the beginning of the next one, if you know what I mean, so having finished “Secrets” (No. 2) you just have to go out and get “Playing with Fire” (No. 3). It’s a very cunning marketing ploy, and I’m sad to say that it works. Well, it works on me and Jenny, anyway.
The most surreal thing about the mighty SVH is that they are books whose covers display the name not of the writer but of the “Creator.” No, it’s not God or anything, but a close second—the amazing Francine Pascal. Ms Pascal does not write the books. Some poor drudge called Kate William (or maybe a team of drudges; Jenny and I have suggested that the books are written by a piteous sweat shop of Vietnamese orphans, chained to typewriters for all eternity…) writes the things, but is it her name emblazoned across their covers? No, it is Francine. Francine Pascal is a woman who has discovered the secret of getting loads of money for sod-all work and I salute her. Imagine her working day. She creates a school (anyone can do that) some stupid characters (ditto) and sits back to watch the cash rolling in. Wow.
As for the books themselves…in the latest ones, collectively known as the “Prom Thriller”, Elizabeth gets drunk at the prom, gives Jessica’s boyfriend a lift home, crashes car, boyfriend dies. Elizabeth branded as alcho-murderer, charged with drunk driving, but—hurrah—it’s proved that the other driver was to blame for the accident. Still, tempestuous Jessica won’t forgive her and she is in torment. Meanwhile, a psycho called Margo has decided to kill Elizabeth and take over her life. If that’s not enough for you, it is revealed that the reason Elizabeth got drunk was that Jessica spiked her punch so her drunken behaviour would prevent her election as Prom Queen. However, only Jessica knows this and she can’t bring herself to say it. Wow. I haven’t read the last two parts of the Prom Thriller yet and I WANT TO! The more thrilling it gets, the funnier it is. And yet, despite the fact that you are reading these books basically to sneer at them, they are strangely engrossing. Okay, so Kate William/the Vietnamese orphans may never win the Booker Prize, but to their credit, the books are actually highly readable, unlike truly shit books like Virginia Andrews’ woeful efforts. And I have to confess that they can be, well, quite moving. Despite ourselves, both Jenny and I admitted to holding back the odd tear when Tricia Martin died of leukemia, or at Regina Morrow’s tragic death after (get this, actually, I tell a lie, we laughed at this bit) snorting half a bucket of cocaine.
Look, basically Jenny and I are tired of being the only people in the cult of Sweet Valley. None of our friends will read them because if they’re girls, they read them when they were 13 and have no desire to read them again or if they’re boys, they, well, they just don’t understand. So come on! They’re cheap and they’re chic and if those people who produce “Action Girl” tees (Action girl was a 70s doll, by the way; I know this from seeing the ads in 70s Buntys) aren’t making Sweet Valley High tees by this time next year my mission will have failed. So join the Sweet Valley Gladiators now! By the way, that’s the name of the football team. If I have my way, soon a lot more people will know that…
