[1] A prime motivator of her writing was the way "teenage books...treated sexual relationships: they were either full of gloom and doom, or were gushy, unrealistic candyfloss".
[1] Kate offers by contrast a certain verismo: "I focus on the real things that don't change - like love and anger and happiness and jealousy".
Scared to let us have differences';[3] a "Best Friend" for imitation - 'I flattered her, I...mirrored her and buoyed her up';[4] or a parent like the heroine's mother in Hard Cash: 'A real living breathing human vampire.
[5] Alternatively, the controlling force - "denying the separateness of the other"[6] - may be a group cult, whether a formal one (Speeding) or an informal subculture, like the hero's 'bond to the team...their triumphant, tribal energy'[7] in Leader of the Pack.
Cann's protagonists, under both social and sexual pressures, regularly face the alternative peril of identity diffusion: 'You're not you any longer, you're what he wants you to be.