THE BUDDY SYSTEM

Between high school and college is a moment of slippage when roles and attitudes and affections come temporarily unglued. For Buddy Solloway it's especially bad because everything outside is changing too -- blacks are taking over his neighborhood, his father has lost his job, and simple relationships open to unsuspected dimensions. The nice thing here is the tone of perfect desentimentalized ordinariness, which makes some extraordinary goings-on seem relatively logical and natural. For starters there's a covert and incomprehensible love affair with his sister, and at the same time a conventional manhood-proving fling with her best friend. As if this weren't enough, his own friend's mother snares him too, to make it -- and end it all -- for reasons that have nothing to do with him. The erotic tangles generate and complicate a whole spectrum of problems, involving Buddy finally with drugs and cops and doctors; but he is an unusually self-assured kid and there is nothing weak-kneed about his coping.