"A man looking at life from a woman's point of view is difficult enough, but Allen is a black author lending perspective to two white characters. A good author, Allen notes, doesn't deal in, well, black and white. 'You don't have to live a life to write about it. I think the colors are irrelevant,' he says, noting the girls' outcomes would not have been any different had they been African-American. 'I always have been fascinated by how (author) James Baldwin did characters who were interchangeable.' " The Daily News [McKeesport, PA]