TRAMPS LIKE US

by Barbara Morgenroth ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 1979

She's into Brautigan and effuses over Ayn Rand; she misuses ""preclude"" and ""nauseous"" and ""genetic engineering"" and scorns a classmate who thinks The Man With the Golden Arm is a ghost story, not a movie--yet Vanessa would have us believe that all her trouble stems from being too smart, and too intellectual, for her own good. (Lest readers suspect that Vanessa is kidding herself, Morgenroth gives her a ""genius-level"" IQ and her school's highest SAT's ever.) And so Vanessa goes on, hating her dumb classmates, her dumb teachers, and her dumb school, having ""a terrible time"" in creative writing because ""no one else could write in there,"" and especially hating her father who, according to her, would consider a longish-haired policeman a ""radical revolutionary commnist hippie freak."" Her life picks up when she meets Daryl, who is also smart, drives a motorcycle, is into music (""sophisticated"" stuff like Phil Ochs and Rhapsody in Blue), and has a similar impossible father. (Vanessa's characterization--and an example of her own creative writing: ""So there was Mr. Hagen, equating creative intelligence with his version of normalcy and wondering forever why the two didn't correlate."") Anyway, when the fathers make a fuss about their seeing each other the two take off on Daryl's motorcycle, but they are caught and Vanessa is sent to a prison-like school where she's telling this--raging at the start of the book about her need to escape and allowing at the end that it's not so bad after all. Looks like tramps like this are just born to run on.

Pub Date: March 9, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION