CLAUDIA, WHERE ARE YOU?

by Hila Colman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 1969

With Hila Coleman's latest Scenario the teenage novel reaches a turning point or you might say a point of no return: runaway Claudia stays away. Her mother is as studied and complacent as the woman's magazine she edits; her lawyer-father has shafts of awareness but shuns involvement; her older brother, the only one who realizes that Claudia hates suburban Stony Point and its expensive artificiality, doesn't care. So Claudia lights out, leaving a note. Cutting between Claudia's runaway view of New York and the East Village (a harrowing night on the subway, a casual pot party, a crash pad, a job keeping house for two ""queers"", a mugging that is almost a rape, a sympatico hippie who takes her in but not to bed, and finally a job, albeit menial, and an apartment, albeit grubby) and analytical scrutiny of her mother trying to cover up, then to justify herself, a rather tight case is made for Claudia's not returning home. Which is what she tells her parents and they must accede to when, at boyfriendly Steve's insistence, she contacts them to borrow an initial stake. What Mrs. Coleman puts in Claudia's mind is close to the concerns of many kids; what she does to Mrs. Nichols is caricature a type. But the nagging nub of the matter is that anti-Establishment sixteen-year-olds like Claudia don't read teenage fiction (even if you're Willing to settle for a guide to leaving school and living precariously) and the eleven-to-thirteen-year-olds who do have interests other than the current East Village scene. So why rub their noses in it?

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION