A review by powerfulanne
Jill by Philip Larkin

Feb. 2024 -- big month for me and Philip Larkin. I found Jill harder to read and more unsettling than A Girl in Winter. Perhaps, even at 29, I'm still a bit too close to being a gauche adolescent to appreciate such a keenly observed tale of gauche and embarrassing adolescence without wanting to die a little bit. It's interesting -- my mother, who hasn't read Jill in decades, remembers it as ending on sort of a triumphant note, whereas I read that scene (no spoilers, but jam is involved) as much more unsettling and precarious -- the narrator isolating himself even further into his delusions.