I'LL LOVE YOU WHEN YOU'RE MORE LIKE ME

by M. E. Kerr ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1977

From Dinky Hocker. . . on, Kerr's projection of contemporary craziness and mixed-up kids has been about the sharpest in juvenile fiction, and her talent for combining the representative and the bizarre has never been so evident as in this inspired cast which seems to write its own story. Wally Witherspoon, chief among them, appears destined (though reluctant) to become a funeral director like his father and to marry narrow-vistaed Harriet Hren, who has all sorts of plans for the viewing rooms, and who bulls him for ""the ring"" though they still have a year of high school. You know it can't be, even before he meets Sabra St. Amour, teenage star of daytime TV. In any case Sabra, who relates only to her mother (and that's another tangled story) and to her own packaged image, never does succeed in his ""ordinary"" world. Then there is Wally's buddy Charlie, who has just decided to come out of the closet--a revelation that surprises no one in town, though he's shown no signs of acting on his inclinations. (Charlie ends up replacing Wally as Mr. Witherspoon's trainee, which is a surprise.) As usual, too, there are all sorts of vividly caricatured adults, many of them giving good, bad, and singularly applicable advice--but here the advice that seems most apt comes straight from Sabra's soap opera. Even the wise words she quotes from her shrink are not from her real shrink, who is the silent kind, but from the one on TV. Kerr plays games with them all--but there is method in it.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION