Mes 14 ans
An Inquiry into My Sexuality
Represented by Mark Kessler
Winner of the Grand Prix de l’Héroïne Madame Figaro 2023 (BD/roman graphique)
Original and riotously funny, a contemporary, feminist coming-of-age story
Thirty-year-old Lucie Mikaélian was cleaning out her childhood bedroom when she stumbled upon the diary she kept the year she turned fourteen. Just like that, she found herself transported back in time. The year is 2003. Spaghetti-strap tank tops are definitely in, Sarah Michelle Gellar was sovereign, and Nirvana was Lucie’s only religion. At the top of fourteen-year-old Lucie’s to-do list? Losing her virginity. And she’d go to any lengths necessary in order to ‘do it’.
In this stylish graphic novel, Mikaélian and co-author Jeanne Boëzec revisit teenage loves, desires, and frustrations with the benefit of sixteen years of hindsight. They explore with insight and sharp wit the formation of her thirty-something attitudes toward sexuality through the eyes of a teenage girl navigating a world replete with sexist messaging, fad diets, and the omnipresent male gaze.
Bought to life through Lisa Chetteau’s illustrations, My Sweet 14 opens a time capsule onto the lost world of early 2000s adolescence and asks: what can we learn from it?