"Youth is free from worry," I said sarcastically. "You've been listenin' to too many adults."

When I first read this book at thirteen, I enjoyed the story. After all, it was about teenagers trying to figure out the world and relationships. It's a time when "adults" try to tell you to enjoy your life because it only gets harder OR they just tell you to suck it up and deal with whatever is going on because it only gets harder. The drugs, alcohol, family situations, and fights were all just backdrops to the story. It was a teenage movie in book form.

Reading this book forty years later hit me the same but completely different. At this point in my life, I have navigated many of the problems this book addresses both successfully and unsuccessfully. This tempted me to recommend this book to a fourteen year old and then I thought better of it. It is an excellent book but there is a level of retrospection that makes the story more bittersweet. I returned to those feelings that occurred between the relative freedom of junior year in high school and the seriousness that happens for many as they enter their senior year in high school. Relationships shift and sometimes disintegrate in that space which feels like the flip of the switch at the time. But this book highlights how a totality of events are gently moving that switch until it just clicks into its new position.

With all that being said, I will probably still recommend this book to a certain fourteen year old in the hopes that they can have the same thoughts later in life. ( )

“You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love the best in the world.”
― S.E. Hinton, That Was Then, This Is Now

I read this as a kid but lately certain things have made me think of it and perhaps I will do a reread.

This book is lesser known then "The Outsiders". S.E. Hinton wrote both and I am a huge fan of both these books. While I still prefer The Outsiders, this is a great book as well.

Many are familiar with the plot. Mark and Bryan have been best friends all their lives. But things are changing. Bryan is changing. He is growing up and for the first time he has a girlfriend. Mark however is not happy with this and wants things to remain just as they have always been.

SPOILERS:

I related to Mark in this book greatly. Things are always changing..who hasn't wanted, at one point or more, for things to just slow down..or freeze altogether?

I am someone who is not all that comfortable with change. And growing up, I too felt this amazing free feeling, the feeling that it would always be this way. This is such an easy book to relate to.

FYI..this book was also a film. I saw it and the ending is completely different. It actually ends on a (semi) happy note. I can understand the "Hollywooding" of the ending but honesty, the book's bleak ending is closer to reality and is most likely how it really would have played out.

Although I felt for Mark, I do not excuse some of his actions. Likewise, I felt for Bryan, trying to stay afloat in a world that is changing, trying to hold on to both people he loves while dealing with so much.

I hope if one has not read this book and they stumble on this review, they will pick it up. Hinton is an incredible writer. She gets in side her characters heads and crafts amazing literature. I've never forgotten this extraordinary book and will reread soon . Highly recommended. ( )

I adore this author's insight into the class and economic divisions among teenagers and the way the book captures the soul wrenching angst created by these factors.

Best of all, this book still rings true some 50 years after the time period in which it was written. The intense feelings of adolescence remain basically the same. ( )

The Outsiders and That Was Then, This Is Now were among a box of books that my father gave me when I was a kid. A bunch of Asimov was in that box, which I devoured; there was also some Vonneguts and the two Hinton books, which I never did for some reason. But after teaching and enjoying The Outsiders, I decided to add That Was Then to my reading list.

That Was Then, This Is Now isn't exactly a sequel to The Outsiders, but it's set in the same unnamed city, and Ponyboy is among the secondary characters. It's narrated by Bryon, a kid who makes money hustling pool, and mostly concerns his relationship with his friend Mark, who moved in with Bryon and his mother when his parents died. It's a quick read-- just 150 pages-- but an affecting one. Hinton's good at capturing that most important part of growing up: that the world is more complex than you thought, and there's nothing you can do about it. Somehow this book manages to be sadder than The Outsiders; while The Outsiders obviously has some dark stuff in it, it manages to end semi-optimistically, I think. But by the end of this book, Bryon has lost many of the people he cares about, by choice or by circumstance, and he isn't going to get them back. Hinton may have created a genre, but unlike some early works in a genre, this maintains its power, even fifty years on.

The S.E. Hinton weekend comes to a close. If I had had "The Outsiders" here I would have read that too!!! Good stuff!! ( )