S. E. Hinton's That was Then, This is Now is a searing and terrible account of what life can be like for east-side youths in an American town—on the look out for easy money, for chicks, for drink, for the fast car to hot-wire and, sometimes, for hard drugs. This is a book which is both violent and tender, a book in which the hero, Bryon, grows from being a kid, when he "had all the answers", into a young manhood beset by questions. After a long search, he and his girl friend find her young brother high on LSD in a hippy house…. When Bryon gets home sickened by the realization that this child may never fully recover, he reaches under his buddy's mattress for a packet of fags—and finds phials of drugs instead. Should he betray his best friend who is quite obviously a pusher? In deciding painfully to call the police, Bryon gains, and loses, all. A starkly realistic book, a punch from the shoulder which leaves the reader considerably shaken.
"Punching from the Shoulder," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3634, October 22, 1971, p. 1318.∗
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