I don't remember seeing this on Banned Books lists and that surprises me. I wasn't too comfortable with a 14 year-old girl feeling 'behind' because she hadn't touched a boy's penis yet, or smoking pot with her mom, or hearing her family say shit and even fuck as if they're innocent as darn. And it's the kids' business whether or not mom and dad are doing it with other people? And this was a loving, relatively healthy and sane family, not dysfunctional.

And it was written in 1982? Did we still need YA novels that were written just to shock? Weren't we ready to focus on the characters and the story, instead of just on what we could get media attention for?

I guess I could forgive all that, but when Dad tells Mom that her friend Ogden was considered a 'laughingstock' for being patient with his mentally ill wife, and nobody except Mom, not even the author, seems to support Ogden, well, yuck.

Just so you know, there's more, though. Big sis is having an affair with her college professor, and though she's a feminist one of her friends is marrying, which is seen as betrayal. And her other best friend is gay. And Grandma in the City plays tennis better than our heroine. And is rich. And is living with a friend who has no income, and even buying him a $25,000 cello bow. And there's a poetry reading in the city. And the teens have jobs but Mom doesn't. And Dad sells his novel, which is actually pretty much a memoir.

Klein just felt she had to hit every button. She's not a bad writer, but this could have been richer and more intense if it were focused on real character development over a reasonably busy summer, instead of written with a shotgun approach.

Seriously, I'm glad this is obsolete. I can see some girls might have thrilled to it, but I wouldn't have even when I was a teen. ( )