Teenage Brain: Gateway To A ‘Bright And Dark’ World

Meg Wolitzer is a novelist whose most recent works include The Uncoupling and a book for young readers, The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman.

You know how people talk about so-called gateway drugs — drugs that lead to harder ones? I think some books can be considered gateway books, because reading them leads you to start reading other books that are similar but more intense. Lisa, Bright and Dark, John Neufeld’s 1969 novel for young adults, is one of these.

I credit this novel, which I read at age 13, to leading me, a few years later, to Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, which would go on to become an essential book in my life. Lisa, Bright and Dark was like The Bell Jar‘s little sister, an easier-to-read, less literary, slightly less harrowing look at mental illness, meant for younger readers.