Sara is currently going thru a Judy Blume phase (she's 12) and I am picking up the ones I missed when I was her age. This one was perfectly enjoyable, an easy read in a way that I think modern writers for kids and teens seem to have lost... Nowadays "voice" is sacrificed to non-stop action, and I find that contemporary writers have a very false, self-conscious and wooden ring to their carefully constructed narrative voices. Anyway, Judy Blume has got the opposite--her prose is natural, unselfconscious, and vibrant.

Having said that... nothing much happens in this book! I kept WAITING for the problem character to do something seriously problematic, but all he ever did was insult his family at the dinner table. And I thought his insults were pretty laid-back, too. And I kept waiting for the borderline obsessive-compulsive viewpoint character to have a breakdown, or be diagnosed with some kind of weird syndrome, but she also managed to hold it together and just naturally relax a little at the end. There's no crisis and no showdown. So basically this is without any particular focus (unlike many of Blume's books), just a slice of suburban life. The family is in some ways unusual, in some ways messed up, and in some ways pretty neat. Like most families.

If there's a message, it's one I really dig, and keep hammering into my own characters in their whiny moments: "You are responsible for your own actions." (Mom, p. 83)