BAD GIRL: Confessions of a Teenage Delinquent

The title of Vona's memoir of her stay in a behavior rehabilitation facility for troubled adolescents is far more provocative than her book's content. Fifteen-year-old Vona's father commits her to Tennessee's Peninsula Village for the usual transgressions of angst-ridden teens: shoplifting, drug use, lying and running away from home. Initially, Vona rebels against the institute's stringent rules, only to find that compliance is key to survival. Stripped of the most basic liberties, Vona takes several weeks to make sense of Peninsula Village's seemingly illogical rules. But she earns privileges as the year progresses and predictably learns the value of trust, respect and responsibility. To distinguish her book from the Girl, Interrupted genre of teenage mental patient–cum–diarist stories, Vona juxtaposes progress notes from her therapy sessions and comments from the institution's staff with her own unenlightened, grouchy account of recovery and rehabilitation. The result is jarring. The notes' unsentimental insights will prompt readers to reconsider their opinions of Vona: in trying to reconcile the differing versions of her behavior and attitude, readers may doubt Vona's veracity in her dual roles as patient and storyteller. More, Vona's unpolished narrative voice relies too heavily on the use of the notes to propel the narrative forward. (Aug.)