TEEN FICTION: WHEN I FIRST moved out of home in my early twenties, there was a cupboard in my house which my friend Isabel and I called the Cupboard of Shame. It was filled with blockbusters by Jacqueline Susann, Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper, as well as lots of teen novels.
But despite its name, getting into the Cupboard of Shame was really an honour. We liked trashy books, but we were selective. And in pride of place in the cupboard was my vast, pastel-covered collection of Sweet Valley Highnovels.
The Sweet Valley High series, for those who were not young girls in the 1980s, centered on the lives of the 16-year-old Wakefield twins, saintly Elizabeth and scheming Jessica, who were, as readers were reminded at the beginning of every book, totally identical, from their eyes ("the colour of the Pacific ocean") to their hair ("like spun gold") to their figures ("a perfect size six"). The series was created by Francine Pascal in 1984, but the books themselves were written by a team of anonymous ghost writers.
The Wakefields lived with their equally perfect parents Ned and Alice in a split-level ranch house (whatever that is) in Sweet Valley, California, an idyllic and alarmingly Waspy town. The books focused not just on the twins but also on their schoolmates, from arrogant rich kid Bruce Patman (who “moves with the grace of a young lion”) to Jessica’s spoiled best friend Lila Fowler, class clown Winston Egbert and resident rocker Dana Larson.
Over more than 150 books and one very long school year (they remained 16 throughout), the twins and their classmates fell in love (everyone in Sweet Valley “falls in love” at the point in a relationship where most of us would be feeling little more than “mild interest”), got kidnapped, ran away from home, solved crimes, died of cocaine overdoses, and never had sex (when it comes to romance, the books are almost totally innocent).
Some of their adventures were more dramatic than others. In what is generally agreed by fans to be the high point of the entire preposterous series, the twins are threatened by an evil and murderous lookalike called Margo, who is obsessed with the twins and makes her way across America to Sweet Valley with the intention of killing one of them and taking her place. Sadly, her plan is foiled; if she’d succeeded, the following books would have been even more entertaining.
The books were hugely successful – 250 million Sweet Valley books were sold – and their success spawned a myriad spin-offs, from the Sweet Valley Twinsseries (the adventures of the twins as pre-teens) and Sweet Valley University(which jumped forward to their college days), to one-offs such as The Wakefields of Sweet Valley, which told the story of the twins' ancestors. There was even a TV series. As the series went on, the plots became even more deranged, with some tales verging on the supernatural (the ones where the twins investigate werewolves in London stands out). And after nearly two decades, Francine Pascal and her writers realised Sweet Valleywas running out of steam; the last book in the series appeared in 2003.
But although Sweet Valleywas gone, it was not forgotten. Many women who had enjoyed the books as kids grew up and became aware of their comic potential, and a cult developed. In a way, the books are best read when you're a bit older than the official target audience. When I was 12, I was more into Paula Danziger than the trashier Sweet Valleyseries, and I only started reading about the Wakefields when I was 17 and my younger sister brought home a few of the books. At that age I was well aware of how ridiculous they were, and what a dreadful message they gave to their young readers: being conventionally gorgeous and popular is really important, as is always having a boyfriend. And if you fail to meet the required bland standard of Sweet Valleybeauty, a Wakefield twin will either bully (Jessica) or kindly guide (Elizabeth) you into getting a makeover.
Despite all this, I couldn’t stop reading. Indeed, the awfulness is part of what makes the books so entertaining to the many grown-up fans who write hilariously snarky recaps of the books on websites such as 1BRUCE1 (named after the licence plate of Bruce Patman’s Porsche).
The cult is expected to grow now that Diablo Cody, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Juno, is working on a Sweet Valleyfilm. As she seems to regard the Wakefields and their world with the right mixture of affection and great amusement, expectations are high. Though not as high as they were for a new book called Sweet Valley Confidential. Written by Pascal herself, it takes the Wakefields into their twenties. But although there are a few hilariously idiotic moments, Sweet Valley Confidentialis dreary and badly plotted, with none of the charm of the originals. The action focuses almost entirely on the Wakefields, and most of the original characters are mentioned only in passing (and often inaccurately). I was disappointed by it. It would not have been worthy of the Cupboard of Shame.
There’s an art to writing memorable trash as opposed to boring trash. In the original Sweet Valley series, Pascal and her army of ghostwriters created a preposterous but perfectly realised world where everyone was gorgeous, the sun always shone, local band The Droids were ready to play at every party and there was always a chance that a handsome newcomer, bitchy new cheerleader or serial killer would come along to liven things up. It was silly and stupid, but it was never boring. And as long as we fans still have our cupboards full of battered pastel paperbacks, we’ll never forget it.
Sweet Valley Confidentialby Francine Pascal is published by Arrow (£6.99/€8)