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GETTING FREE by Nigel Hinton

GETTING FREE

By

Pub Date: Dec. 18th, 1979
Publisher: Nelson

Society takes a drubbing, true love finds a way--aided by 15-year-old Johanna's convenient miscarriage. She's the daughter of a fanatical, self-protective ""TV Vicar"" whose only solution to her pregnancy is an unwanted abortion. Boyfriend Pete, 16, won't ask his widowed mother's help because of resentment at her dating, SO the two run away--first to the hut of an eccentric spiritualist who boots them out when his ailing cat dies (radiant Johanna's presumed ""powers""), then to the pad of some London squatters whose welcome ceases when a police-search threatens. In desperation Pete steals a car and the pair head for Scotland; but en route to a commune refuge they're snowbound in a cottage and, while Pete heads for help, Johanna miscarries. There's genuine warmth at the island community but not, alas, refuge: the police have picked up their trail. This time Pete is convinced they must turn themselves in and wait out the two years till they can marry--and a spell of solitude proves to Johanna that she can indeed ""manage without you"" meanwhile. The book has its better moments--especially in the strains between Johanna's radical bent and Pete's relative straightness--but in the main it's yet another simplistic, post-Sixties swipe at constraints: ""Really there was only one rule, nature's.