Somehow, after all these years, Peter Weissman has managed to uncannily capture the texture, the rhythm and the dialogue of stoned young people living in NYC's East Village in 1967. At a time when books on the sixties have become more common as the protagonists reach their sixties, Weissman's work is unusual in depicting the life of an everyday hippie, not a Weatherman or a celebrity.

Anyone coming of age in the late sixties drug culture will recognize the daily characters and settings of Peter's hippie life with a sense of amazement - here they are again! While this is cast as a "coming of age" story, by the time Peter goes to California and returns, the drugs have overwhelmed any sense of growing up. Luckily, Weissman has a sense of humor, and I found myself laughing out loud again and again, which was good because, while the supporting cast goes through every kind of change, Peter himself seems to be heading in one direction, - from "a sorry scene... reminiscent of the thirties" in California to being "frozen in a particular purgatory" back East on his return, despite his recurrent hope that they're all on the brink of a new and more meaningful reality.

While the humor is wonderful, it's the epilogue which makes it work in the end. Since Weissman wrote the book we know he escaped with his brains intact, but it takes the epilogue for us to really believe it. As a sixty year old myself I loved the book and found it provided a rare and gritty assist to looking back and show more trying to make sense anew of those years. I highly recommend it to my peers and I can't help but suspect there's an audience as well among today's kids in their twenties. show less