Reviews: (by author)

Carolyn Mackler. Love and Other Four-Letter Words. New York: Delacorte, 2000. 247 pp. ISBN 0-358-32743-9. $14.95

Seemingly this first novel by Carolyn Mackler is full of clichés. Every single motif associated with young adult fiction is there: parents' divorce, moving to a new community, finding new friends, loyalty and betrayal, an indifferent, depressive mother and an absent father, low self-esteem, budding sexuality, and - more rare in recent novels - a promise of happiness at the end. Even the favorite dog as the young girl's best friend. However, these banalities are counterbalanced by a genuine and self-ironic narrative voice, which makes this novel an unexpectedly fresh experience. Don't read it if you are looking for action - there isn't any. But if you are looking for a self-reflexive teenager's emotional storms during a couple of summer weeks - here is a modern, female Holden Caulfield, telling her story, alone and lost in New York City at the edge of the new millennium.

Reviewed by Maria Nikolajeva

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