Beh is 14 years old, the summer holidays are over, it's the first day of school again and she has missed out on a lot of things. There is, for example, last year's class trip she couldn't go along on because she was ill. What is it like after so many weeks - time that seems like an eternity when you are 14 - to hook up again with classmates who have changed so much over the summer? And what does it feel like when your life seems to be moving forward at full force, your parents are in the middle of a divorce, your father is starting a new family, and then you fall in love for the first time?
Tamara Bach speaks directly to the reader and describes a single day in the life of Beh in this short novel. Some parts of the story remain unspoken or open-ended. What is written on the postcard sent by the boy who had given her that first kiss? It's up to the reader to fill in these and other blanks. But despite that one feels very close to the protagonist. Tamara Bach portrays Beh's experiences, expectations and fears in a marvelously simple but equally poetic language that is both reticent and at the same time authentic in its expression of the protagonist's perceptions and feelings. It is rare for a novel to be able to capture the cares, troubles and hopes that come with being young in a literary voice like Tamara Bach's Fourteen.
Nominated for the 2017 German Children’s Literature Award