Riding In Cars With Boys
Beverly Donofrio
Penguin Books
<p>"Trouble began in 1963 . . . the age-old trouble." Unable to attend college, Beverly Ann Donofrio lost interest in everything but riding around in cars, drinking, smoking, and rebelling against authority. After her teenage marriage failed, Donofrio found herself at an elite New England university, books in one arm, child on the other. Then, furnished with ambition, dreams, and five hundred dollars, she took herself and her son to New York City to begin a career and a life.<br></p><p>An outrageous and touching memoir, <em>Riding in Cars with Boys</em> is about becoming middle-class and the compromises made between being your own person and fitting into society. But mostly it's a story of a teenage mother who, as her son grows up, becomes an adult herself.</p>From Publishers Weekly<p>A self-described wild girl travels through the "demolition derby" of her 1960s lifestyle in this rough-hewn account. Born into a working-class Italian-American family in Wallingford, Conn., Donofrio rebelled early, defying her policeman father especially. Consorting with lowlifes, indulging in drugs, promiscuous and aimless, she became pregnant and entered an ill-starred, short-lived marriage. Later, a mother, she studied at Wesleyan University, where she soaked up another kind of culture and another type of liberation. In this humor-flecked, street-side view of her unconventional life, Donofrio, a New York City freelance journalist, writes about a mother and her son coming of age together. <br>Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>From Library Journal<p>Donofrio's poignant 1960s memoir features the silent majority of teenagers and young people who didn't protest or go to Vietnam or attend the Summer of Love, but who did what teens do no matter how turbulent the times: they have sex, rebel, hang out, drink, smoke, and just generally try to have as good a time as possible. That's what Donofrio did, at least until she got pregnant before graduating from high school, was married (briefly) and divorced, and ended up rearing a small son alone and on welfare. Today she has a master's degree, lives in New York City, has raised a son without visible scars, and is a writer. Donofrio's funny, heartwarming story will especially appeal to every similar child of the 1960s who, despite barriers and a lack of encouragement, safely made the passage to adulthood. Reminiscent in style and content (though covering different eras) of Betsy Israel's Grown-up Fast: A True Story of Teenage Life in Suburban America (Poseidon, 1988). Highly recommended.<br><em>- Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Cty. Free Lib., Seaside, Cal.</em><br>Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p></br></br></br></br>