THE FIRST SIP OF WINE

by Jane Gale Pattison ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 18, 1960

This is a first novel about a young girl's introduction to the adult world of illicit sex which the publisher has overzealously and unfortunately compared to Colette, Salinger and Sagan. Carey Cook who likes to think of herself as sophisticated, though she is actually selfishly childish, is sent by her father, a Washington economist, to a dismal boarding school in Connecticut. There she makes only one friend, Beatrice deValentin, a beautiful French teacher with a romantic past. She has an obvious crush on Beatrice and is distressed when she learns that her idol has another ""friend"", a Max whose wife has been in a sanitarium for years. At the end of the school term Beatrice and Max invite Carey along with Max's nephew Damon on a boating trip around Cape Cod. Carey, resenting the relationship of the two older people is about to slip off the edge of innocence with Damon, a wastrel, when she is discovered by Beatrice, given a talking to and sent back to Washington, presumably a wiser girl. There's absolutely nothing likable or even particularly interesting about the book's heroine and for all it has to add to the literature of adolescence The First Sip of Wine might just as well have been left on the vine.

Pub Date: July 18, 1960

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crowell

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories: FICTION