MOUSE'S VINEYARD

by Charlotte MacLeod ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1968

When Mark refers to Susan Shane as ""that fat kid in the neon shorts"" (p. 47), it's the first sign of vitality and a delayed starter to an idling summer story. Mark and sister Hannah, visiting artist aunt Alexia on Martha's Vineyard, find their solitary reveries interrupted by the plastic-coated, bleached New Yorker (Alexia's agent's daughter), who is clinging to pop glop while her parents are separating from each other. So Hannah, appropriately known as Mousekin, has her hands full of slacker SuSu instead of her bird list. She dreams up a menacing man hiding at a neighbor's to charge her transistorized roommate (her favorite group is The Agonies): then they overhear something vague that verifies their suspicions. SuSu starts dimming those neon-isms (haircut, bleached out clothes) and friendship blooms on the Vineyard. The neighbor is hiding out a man but he's not after Susan; on the contrary, he's afraid she'd be after him--he's one of the Agonies, supposedly guru-ating elsewhere but actually holed up here with his aunt for privacy. The transition (of both girls) is implicit in the initial tension, and the Mouse and spoiled b-rat polarity is neither new nor sufficiently reactivated to matter.

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Weybright & Talley

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION