Seventeen: The shocking true story of a teacher's affair with her student

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For those who love newspapers, this is a must read. For an insight into the world of journalism and macho culture, it is exceptional. For those who just love to read a deeply personal story of loss and self-realisation, it is a unique and joyous read.

It’s 1992. Like every other seventeen-year-old boy, Joe has one eye on his studies, the other on his social life – smoking, Britpop, girls. He’s looking ahead to a gap year full of travel and adventure before university when his teacher – attractive, mid-thirties – takes an interest in him. It seems like a fantasy come true. So when the 747 went down in the paper's area - despite not being on a major flight path - the paper entered an existentialist crisis. The natural instinct of a journalist is to go after a scoop, but when the scoop comes, the fear is paralysing. Nobody knows how to play it, and the temptation is to retreat to the familiar comforts of routine basketball games and ceremonial openings of arts festivals. This is the context into which Yuuki is thrust - with all eyes on him. And at the same time, Yuuki has his own personal issues to resolve, not least of which is the sudden collapse of his climbing buddy Anzai from the circulation department... Thirty years on, this is Joe’s gripping record of the illicit relationship that dominated his adolescence and dictated the course of his life. With a heady dose of nineties nostalgia and the perfectly captured mood of those final months at school, Joe charts the enduring legacy of deceit and the indelibility of decisions made at seventeen.To keep teeth pretty, never open curler clips or bobby pins with them; don’t chew on pencils, don’t break sewing thread, and don’t grind your teeth.”

If your friends can understand you perfectly, but strangers and teachers frequently have difficulty, chances are you don’t really want them to hear you.” If hot pink on you makes people want to say: 'Pink, where are you going with that girl?' use it for a scarf or shirt rather than a whole dress.” It isn’t until Gibson is in his thirties that he seems to realise that what she did was illegal. “If it happened today,” a friend says, “there would be police, a court case. It’s a criminal offence. Look at the toll it’s taken on you.” When we read news stories about male teachers sexually abusing their female students, we are outraged and demand justice for the victim. When the gender roles are reversed, however, there’s a tendency for people to laugh it off, to suggest that the boy probably enjoyed every minute of it. But abuse is abuse, and rape is rape, regardless of who is in the position of power.Books The best new books to read in August, from a new Ann Patchett novel to Mark Watson's memoir Read More