Skunk Girl

Skunk Girl is the emotional journey of a teenager called Nina.

Nina Khan

Nina lives in small-town Deer Hook, population 11,250. In her school, with it’s expected coterie of snobbish cheerleaders, handsome jocks and loving (but sometimes clueless) friends, brown-skinned Nina feels like the odd-one out.

The fact that she is a Pakistani-Muslim and comes from a conservative household means that she’s often envious of the freedom that her friends take for granted. While being a fairly intelligent student herself, she has to constantly face comparisons with her super nerd, Harvard attending sister : Sonia. Nina suffers the secret pangs of being a fairly-hairy teenager and the added shock of discovering a thick strip of soft hair running down the center of her back (ergo, the title). She isn’t allowed out on weekends and is constantly under her parents’ radar, lest she becomes ‘Americanized’ or as her aunt would scathingly put it,”umreecanized”.

So what happens when you throw in an handsome Italian boy called Asher Richelli who despite being wooed by the most popular girl (and Nina’s nemesis), appears to be interested in the go-nowhere Nina?

I liked the book. I really did. Far more than I had anticipated. Coming from a fairly conservative South-Indian family myself, I associated with Nina’s teenage frustrations. And maybe I enjoyed it more for the trips down memory-lane that it took me. I read out snarky sections to my mum and she gave me the cheeky smile cum weary resignation, as we remembered similar incidents.

Many might complain that Nina whined. A Lot. Let me just tell you that it’s NOT an exaggeration. I whined and whinged. An embarrassing LOT! Maybe now, as an adult, I understand where my parents were coming from. Evolved thought-processes have taken their time to settle in. But yep, teendom was an angry canvas of red-faced me, bawling out at the unfairness of it all.

Nina Khan’s story is believable and entertaining. It has a nice vein of self-deprecating humour running through it. The ending could either be termed as realistic or a bit surprising, consider your outlook. Either which way, it’s a story by an author who has immersed herself into her plot and used it to maximum effect.