The voice of a generation

TAVI Gevinson and I are emailing at night: 11pm my time; “free period” at school hers.

She’s telling me what it felt like four years ago, as a 12-year-old blogger, when high-profile fashion insiders started saying her writing was too good to be true. They suggested that she, with her dyed grey hair and self-styled fashion shoots in the garden of her family’s home in suburban Chicago, was not who she claimed to be.

“When people started to say I was fake, my dad gave me a short story called ‘Claudine’s Book’, and I’ve been thinking about it again a lot lately,” she says. It’s the story of a gifted 12-year-old girl whose stepmother finds, then publishes, her diary. When the diary starts to get attention and journalists begin investigating its author, Claudine’s stepmother takes credit for it.