In [The Hollywood Kid] Miss Wojciechowska does succeed in conveying some idea of what life in the Hollywood milieu must be like for a sensitive adolescent boy. Despite this, the book is a blatant failure mainly because it is a pseudo-adult rather than a juvenile novel. Hollywood families obviously have problems which are quite different from those of average families. And, the 15-year-old hero's problems arise from his life; it is certainly difficult to be the son of a famous movie star, to live amidst the glamour and phoniness of Hollywood, to lose two fathers—the real one by divorce, the stepfather by death. Bryan's search for help somehow strikes the wrong note and the solution to his problems does not ring true. In many scenes, Bryan seems to be an adult masquerading as a teen-ager, in other scenes he is realistic and appealing. The conversations between Bryan...