Radhika Sanghani Meet the Author

Radhika Sanghani is 24 and a journalist. She works for the Daily

Telegraph's women's section and has written her first book called

virgin. And it is published by Mills and Boon. Radhika Sanghani, let's

start with the Mills and Boon thing. I have a fixed idea of what a Mills

and Boon 's book is. It's all about a heroine who finally gets Mr

Wright. It's all very soft focus and not very realistic. This is a very

different sort of book? Yes, it is! Mills and Boon is still do their

historical romance, this night that appears on a horse, but they also

change direction and do books that are a lot more contemporary, so for

example, my book, virgin, is a realistic account of life as a

20`something young girl. It's also different from the conventional book

because I do want to give too much away but it's very explicit, first

of all, but secondly, the course of romance doesn't follow that

prescribed template. You seem to be subverting the genre, if anything.

My heroine is not passive at all. She is trying to lose her virginity.

She is trying to orchestrate her own love life. She is a feminist. It is

different because she's not that typical heroine who just lets love

come and find her. She is trying to lose her virginity. She is appalled

to find she has reached the third year of university and not lost it.

Why is it so important to her and perhaps to others of that

generation? I just think that nowadays, there are so many

pressures, expectations, for younger people to lose their virginity and

be sexually active. At university, there is this culture with drinking

games revolving around sexual experience. It seems like the norm

at university. The problem is that you are not part of the group, you

feel left out. Who is this became that? I'd you expecting it to be

read by your peers and contemporaries or by somebody

younger? I wrote it with my peers in mind, so young 20`something women.

At the same time, it would appeal to people who are 16 onwards because

they are going through this idea of sexual pressures now they are at an

age where they can actually have sex. They are more vulnerable to

these pressures. It occurred to me that this is quite a useful... One

of the things you're heroine does is write a very explosive blog with a

friend, full of useful advice about matters to do with sex, or far too

explicit to talk about in this interview! Did you write

intentionally, thinking, that has an educational function? I guess. My

heroine makes lots of mistakes and often gives into precious and I

thought it might be nice to have a more neutral part of the book that

gives a bit more honest advice so that a young person reading it does

get the other perspective. These days, we have the Internet,

Wikipedia, pawn. Don't young people pick up all they need to know anyway

or is there still a purpose in writing something which is quite

explicitly educational? It's so scary that there is so much on the

Internet because it can be so wrong. If you do just find pornography, you

get that one`sided view of the situation. It isn't that realistic

to a young person at all. The same with educational blogs and websites.

It all feels far removed. I thought by writing it is fiction with a

related bull, likeable heroine, then people can actually find a way into

that and understand a bit more. You write for the Daily Telegraph

women's section. I wonder how far the content of the book was driven

by your experience as a journalist and the fact that your starting

point as a journalist is to convey information. With my day job, I

write about women's issues a lot so I know a lot about the sexual

expectations young people have and the pressures on their

preoccupations with things like body hair. I am very aware of this and

the growing awareness of feminism amongst young people, so it is

something I put into my book, purely because more than other people, I

know how widespread is. You have a cover line on this book from the

late Joan Rivers. How did you manage that? She was alive at the time. My

American publicists sent over to her and she said she loved it! What do

you do next? I'm writing a sequel. And what will happen in the sequel?

You're heroine has lost her virginity by the end of this book.

Now, it explores what it is like to be a modern`day young girl who is

now sexually active, so it goes through her relationships, dating

and it explores themes of... The new pressures that come with being

sexually active. How many people have you slept with, how many

relationships have you had? We may be entering into dangerous territory

by how autobiographical is this? Not at all! Completely fiction. But I

have seen a lot of incidents with my friends at uni. It does have some

basis in reality, just not mine! If you were lucky to have the

sunshine today, it became very worn `` warm. But this persistent low

cloud held the temperatures down. There are one or two thunderstorms

in southern England this evening and a few more will develop and spread

their way