Lettres de l'intérieur [Book Review]

Lettres de l'intérieur ("Letters from the Inside") is the French translation of a book by Australian author John Marsden. The story is told solely through a series of letters between two teenage girls who know each other only through correspondence (one of them posted an ad in a magazine seeking pen-pals). About half-way through the book, there's a big twist--for those interested in SPOILERS here it is: one of the girls is incarcerated in a juvenile detention facility (it's actually not that big of a twist considering the title and the cover (at least of the French edition) of a teenage girl behind bars. The incarcerated girl has thus been lying for months, and once the other one discovers the lies, their relationship is strained. It's an interesting, solid story with a thought-provoking ending.

It also made me think, do kids still have pen pals anymore? I'd assume with the rise of the Internet, far fewer would correspond through old-fashioned letters. I remember having a couple of pen-pals as a kid: a guy who operated a comic book fan club devoted to Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, and a girl who lived in far away Canada . . .