Feeling Sorry for Celia

I'm not really sure how to describe my love for this novel.

So, I will start off with a whole bunch of adjectives that I think are appropriate:
Witty, clever, funny, honest, heartfelt and true.

I first read this book a few years ago when I borrowed it from a school library. By the third page I was irrevocably hooked. 
Look, I always feel like my words are inadequate when I'm trying to describe the excellence of a book that I love ardently. But here goes.

Feeling Sorry for Celia is a brilliantly clever young adult novel that is constructed entirely through letters, notes and postcards from both real and imaginary people (societies) in Elizabeth Clarry's life and mind. But the marvellous thing about FSFC, is that the epistolary style of the novel--the varied array of letters and notes--does not feel stilted or jumpy, and instead flows smoothly and easily. It kept me ravenously turning the pages. 

As part of a pen pal project started by Elizabeth's English teacher Mr Botherit, Elizabeth writes to a girl (Christina--don't call her Tina) who attends the neighbouring Brookfield High.
Through insightful, funny, honest and witty letters, Elizabeth and Christina develop a wonderful new friendship based entirely on their correspondence with one another. The concept of feeling comfortable sharing secrets, hopes, dreams, worries--sharing our lives--with strangers through the form of letters is deftly developed by Moriarty throughout the novel, and is what makes FSFC a unique gem of a book.

Both Elizabeth and Christina are lovely, well-developed and real characters. The way they support each other through life's ups and downs, and genuinely care about one another's issues (once they get past their 'Letter to a Complete and Utter Stranger' stage) is wonderfully endearing.

Celia was a little more difficult to relate to, mostly because she was such a crazy, self-obsessed kind of character--Moriarty carefully constructs Celia deliberately like this, I think, to reinforce the idea that friends who are so caught up in their own issues that they neglect to consider the feelings of others are not good friends to have. Particularly when you don't have many quality friends, like Elizabeth. Until Christina.

I adored Elizabeth's mother for her eccentricity. The notes that she leaves Elizabeth on the fridge and under her bedroom door were so simply funny . 
'It is very extremely cold today. Wear seven pairs of stockings.'
'I hope you feel better today. Please ring me at work if you are dead.'

I remember when I finished reading I was overcome by that bittersweet feeling of disappointment in turning the last page and realising that that was it. So, IMMEDIATELY, I went back to the library and borrowed the rest of the Ashbury High novels, which, not surprisingly were just as brilliant and funny and clever as FSFC.

Jaclyn Moriarty is such a talented writer, and this is evident not only in FSFC, but in the rest of the Ashbury/Brookfield series, and also I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes.

Moriarty's writing will always be special to me, as reading FSFC really got me hooked on our contemporary Australian YA literature. 

Feeling Sorry for Celia is a genuine Australian YA gem, and I recommend it highly .

This is a book about love and friendship through letters. Elisabeth (the main character) is having trouble figuring out who her real friends are and how to be an average teenage girl. While at school she has to write letters to a pen pal from another school and she meets a girl called Cristina. The two pen pals quickly become friends, Cristina makes Elisabeth realize what really matters in life and that life isn't as bad as she thinks it is and through all the though times Elisabeth and her pen pall go through at the end they prove that they are truly there for each other.