Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Hinton, S(usan) E(loise) - The Times Literary Supplement

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THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

S. E. Hinton's That was Then, This is Now is a searing and terrible account of what life can be like for east-side youths in an American town—on the look out for easy money, for chicks, for drink, for the fast car to hot-wire and, sometimes, for hard drugs. This is a book which is both violent and tender, a book in which the hero, Bryon, grows from being a kid, when he "had all the answers", into a young manhood beset by questions. After a long search, he and his girl friend find her young brother high on LSD in a hippy house…. When Bryon gets home sickened by the realization that this child may never fully recover, he reaches under his buddy's mattress for a packet of fags—and finds phials of drugs instead. Should he betray his best friend who is quite obviously a pusher? In deciding painfully to call the police, Bryon gains, and loses, all. A starkly realistic book, a punch from the shoulder which leaves the reader...

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1. Introduction
2. Lillian N. Gerhardt
3. Thomas Fleming
4. William Jay Jacobs
5. A. Chambers
6. Sheryl B. Andrews
7. Michael Cart
8. The Times Literary Supplement
9. John Rowe Townsend
10. Jane Abramson
11. Anita Silvey
12. Robert Berkvist
13. Dorothy Nimmo
14. The Council On Interracial Books For Children
15. Paxton Davis
16. Margery Fisher
17. Lance Salway
18. Susan Thompson
19. Copyright

1. S. E. Hinton