If I Love You, am I Trapped Forever?

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Alan, a popular senior high school student, faces painful changes after a new student, Duncan "Doomed" Stein, comes to town and starts an influential underground newspaper.

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Not sure it stands the test of time submitted by willow on June 24, 2015, 10:49pm I read several ME Kerr books as a teen but had pretty much forgotten them. This 1973 book has been reissued and I am not certain it stands the test of time.

Something about it reminds me of Catcher in the Rye: maybe it was daring at the time, but now it seems pretty tame and possibly old-fashioned. There are so many cultural references that are too old for me, and therefore border on the incomprehensible to today's teens. This means the book represents teenaged life for people who are now in their late 50s. Things like "the new soft lenses" (which is the way they are constantly referred to in the book) for contact lenses, a legal drinking age of 18 (and the ability for a teenager to drink without being questioned at a restaurant), the outrageously expensive $2.50 ice cream, Ross Macdonald novels, public smoking (including on a bus), a mimeograph machine, and a "hi-fi." The reason this sticks out more than in, say, a Jane Austen novel is that this book has an air of being breathlessly hip and now, except that time was forty years ago.

If you are able to move beyond that, there is a message of teenagers' fickleness and how fast trends come and go. Certainly there are the same issues of authenticity and identity that are common in YA books, as well as unreliable adults who let down the teens. It is an interesting enough read, but I don't think the title question -- whether a high school romantic relationship is forever -- is very salient in today's times, when no one really expects that sort of commitment at a young age. I think this is the sort of coming of age book that is enjoyed much more by adults than by teens.