This book deals with assumptions that create prejudice. Jody tells Henry Him She Loves?

that the way to make an impression on her father is to tell him he wants to become something impressive like a physicist or an architect. When she finds that Henry has not made a decision, she says, "Jewish boys always know what they want to be when they are as old as you."

Given the time that has passed since the end of World War II and the fact that these teen-agers were not even alive at that time, the prejudice seems overdone in a 1984 book. When Henry goes to pick up Lena, her father calls him Adolph and shouts "Heil!"

He's German. He's got Deutschland uber Alles' coming out of his brain on a secret wavelength, and I smell sauerkraut oozing out of his pores, and I see swastikas in...