That Was Then, This Is Now | A Coming-of-Age Novel
France is a librarian, college counselor, and teacher at University Liggett School and teaches writing at Macomb Community College near Detroit, Michigan. In the following essay, France compares Hinton’s novel with Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show as a coming-of-age novel.
S. E. Hinton’s That Was Then, This Is Now is a coming of age novel set during the Vietnam War around the late 1960s. It takes place in an unnamed city very much like Tulsa, Oklahoma, that shares significant characteristics with Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show, set in the vicinity of the fictional Thalia, Texas, during the Korean War in the early 1950s. Following the lives and trials of teenagers as they progress through cycles of hope and loss, both novels provide details of setting, and strong plots, that give...
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