PETER AND VERONICA

Peter's mother disapproves of Veronica because she's older and a girl and not Jewish, Veronica's mother disapproves of Peter because he is Jewish, but Peter and Veronica are friends—forever: "I swear to God that I'll never forget Veronica Ganz if she dies. And if I do, may I fall down dead!" "And I swear that if Peter Wedemeyer dies first, I'll remember him and make everybody else remember him or may I be struck down dead!" The pledge in the cemetery, Veronica deadly serious, Peter humoring her, is the apotheosis of their accord; life is harsher. Peter, fighting his family up to the last minute, finally gains permission to invite Veronica to his bar mitzvah—and then she doesn't come. Peter is hurt, resentful, outraged; that she is big and clumsy and afraid of parties, that he was thinking of his feelings (of being a hero) rather than of her feelings doesn't get across to him until after a summer that sees a change in Veronica too. What does come across throughout are the horrors of being a short twelve waiting to "shoot up," of having a mother whose pursuit of dust leaves no room for privacy, of plunging into a first evening party with girls. Some of its predecessors in the series have had a higher hilarity quotient but this is actively and acutely—and disarmingly—a boy in a bind.