The story of three male youths, each having their own chapters until eventually their stories overlap. Taking place around the mid-1950s, Brock is sixteen and lives with his father and his new, younger wife. Brock is a tightly wound boy who is always groomed, hates rock and roll and the vulgar behavior of his classmates, including the pretty girl in class who is always trying to get his attention. As Brock often tells himself, he'd never have anything to do with that sort of thing, though he does have a penchant for stealing.
Next we meet eight year old genius Charles, who has become a minor celebrity by appearing on a quiz show where he has racked up tens of thousands of dollars in potential wins. The stress of his genius has pushed his parent's already volatile marriage to the edge, and with one single misunderstood word from Charles, a domino effect is set in motion.
The third boy is Reggie, so smothered by his mother and her friend that he makes a bad plan to escape. ( )

"Contrived" is the best word for the three interwoven stories in this book. One concerns a strange high school boy with a clean fetish and a loathing for sex and rock 'n' roll. The second concerns a 20 year old boy trying to escape the overbearing clutches of his mother. The third is about an 8 year old genius competing on a game show and his parent's incessant fights over how to treat him. Packer (Marijane Meeker) was capable of pretty good psychological insight in the other novels I have read by her, but this one is aimed from the first at being sensational and shocking, and the stories don't hold up as well. In addition, there is no connection between the stories except brief passages where characters in the other two threads see the 8 year old on the quiz show or when they read newspaper articles about the crescendo of events at the end of the novel. Despite these shortcomings, however, the book does grab hold of you about a third of the way through and it is a good read. ( )