WHAT KIND OF GUY DO YOU THINK I AM?

by Sidney Offit ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1977

In an annoyingly overworked bit of role reversal, brainy ""seven hundreds on all the boards"" Hilary Moscowitz picks up, ardently pursues, and finally pairs up with eighteen-year-old Ted Cooper, a self-styled underachiever. Hassled by his family about not going to college and harboring secret fears of impotence because he couldn't ""just go ahead and fuck"" a neighborhood nympho, Ted at first has mixed emotions about ""wild,"" cigarello-smoking Hilary. ""I'm not interested in being another phone number,"" he asserts after Hilary tries to slap the make on him. Of course, her heavy come-on is, in part, a cover-up--her way of getting back at parents who won't foot the bill for her Princeton tuition. And all it takes is four endlessly soul-searching days for them to strip away each other's defenses and experience a blissful union of mind and body (Offit discreetly cuts to the next, post-coital chapter as soon as Ted has ""entered"" Hilary.) Despite the lure of a couple of semi-explicit and decidedly soft-core sex scenes, readers will have trouble slogging through Ted's deeply analytical first-person account. Both main characters are so self-absorbed, in fact, that dialogues sound more like interrupted monologues than conversations. And the absurd end (Ted plans to put Hilary through Princeton by slinging hash at an all-night diner) only serves to further handicap this already lame love story.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION