Sex education has always been a hot topic. But at a time when children are seeing pornography by the age of 13 on average, it feels especially urgent. With her young adult novel Babushka, the sequel to the coming-of-age Toxic, mental health campaigner Natasha Devon MBE tackles themes like victim blaming, safe sex and healthy relationships through the eyes of Cerys, age 16, who leaves Wales for the bright lights of London declaring: “I’ve never felt like I don’t know who I am. Just that I was in the wrong place.”
Devon herself felt similarly when she was growing up in Ugley, a village in Essex. Reading magazines like Cosmopolitan made her think: “In a big city I’ll find my tribe.”
Babushka is set in 2000, when Devon was a teenager, to signal that issues like anxiety, misogyny and the impact of celebrity culture are not new. “Problems with body image and mental health shapeshift with each generation,” Devon says.
“With Babushka I’m saying, hopefully not heavy handedly: ‘This is how the world works, these are bad decisions – but this is what could go right.’”
Devon was appointed as the first mental health champion for schools in 2015 until she spoke out against the government, and went on to co-present the show Naked Beach, a televised experiment that aimed to encourage people to feel more confident in their bodies. Having talked for years with young people, teachers and parents, Devon has been driven to campaigning.
“At first it was about wanting to imbue the years I lost to mental illness with meaning. Now it’s about systemic injustice,” she says.
