THE LIFE HISTORY OF A STAR

"Why can't changes ever be good?" As recorded in the pages of her diary, a 14-year-old's life takes on a decidedly soapy cast in this uneven debut. Kristin frets about the sudden, late development of her body, and watches her friends trying to grow up too fast: meanwhile, her beloved older brother David, mangled in the Vietnam War, lies in the attic, severely depressed and dying slowly. David's constant, haunting presence (Kristin usually refers to him as "the ghost") and family money problems has her parents' marriage on the rocks. To top it all off, she has a bad case of adolescentitis, manifested as an adversarial relationship with her mother and a great fondness for words like "gross" and "pathetic." Happily, Kristin's mordant sense of humor, plus a serious search for meaning in life that takes her from Camus and Simone de Beauvoir to the confessional (where she receives not platitudes but refreshingly unconventional comments from the priest) and a Unitarian church, save this from turning into another whiny teenage diatribe. Easton delivers some messages—teenage sex, as described by Kristin's friends, comes across as uncomfortable and a bit silly—but neither they, nor David's eventual death, will make readers feel sandbagged. Try this on fans of Naylor's "Alice" books, or Judy Blume's novels for tweens. (Fiction. 12-15)