THE RISE AND FALL OF A TEEN-AGE WACKO

by Mary Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 1980

Despite a writer mother, an artist father, and a cloyingly creative little sister, 16-year-old Laura has no interests or ambitions beyond shopping at Bloomingdale's. Miserable at the summer place the family rents in the mountains, she talks her parents into letting her go back to New York to a two-week babysitting job. As Laura's five-year-old charge Sarah also loves shopping, the two have a fantasy binge at East Side shops. At an auction, Laura buys her dream dress, a Thirties antique. Wearing the magic dress, she stumbles into a scene Woody Allen is shooting in Central Park. Woody, taking her for a ""crazy,"" likes the bit . . . She'll be in a Woody Allen movie!. . . Then she hears that he has cut the footage. She pursues Woody at Elaine's and Michael's Pub, gets drunk waiting, but doesn't get near Woody. But she's got the bug, Another deliberate attempt to crash a New York film in progress ends in a bizarre encounter with punked-out actors and a police car ride home--where her father, unexpectedly in town, puts an end to her dream. Back in the mountains Laura sympathizes with her sister during a precocious crisis, and determines more realistically than before to talk to her parents about modeling or acting school. This outcome may be realistically modest, but it's not much of a reward for all the tearing around readers have had to follow. Bloomies freaks like Laura may get some vicarious kicks from the shopping tour and the New York place-name dropping. Others will find her determinedly shallow self-description tiresome, especially when no other qualities surface throughout the story and the action isn't funny enough to come off as farce.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION