From archive (archive)
Subject: DOWN TOWN by Polikarpus & King
From: ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ
Date: 8 Jul 87 15:34:18 GMT




		DOWN TOWN by Viido Polikarpus and Tappan King
			      Tor, 1987, $2.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		       Copyright 1987 Evelyn C. Leeper

     I suppose the cover quote ("...a book that today's readers will pass
along to their children in 20 years time.") should have alerted me to expect
what used to be called a "juvenile" novel and is now called a "young adult"
novel.  Cary Newman's parents are getting a divorce.  So he and his mother
move back to the city.  (His father very conveniently also moves back to the
city.)  Cary runs off one afternoon and finds himself "Down Town"--not the
downtown towards the Battery, but the "Down Town" underneath New York.
Well, not really underneath, though Cary gets there through a subway
station.

     "Down Town" is a parallel city, though not an alternate universe in the
usual sense.  Apparently all that is lost or abandoned in "Up Town" ends up
in Down Town, including people.  The places in Down Town have "clever"
names: Time Square, Broad Way, the Antiquarium.  It's all a fairly average
rite-of-passage novel which won't mean as much to people who are unfamiliar
with New York.  The ending is far too pat; in fact, the whole
interconnection of the plotlines is contrived.  The illustrations would be
interesting if they could be appreciated; unfortunately, they seem to have
been drawn with a larger format in mind and a mass-market paperback does not
do them justice.  Perhaps the adolescents of today do need more modern
fables than they can find in the pastoral writings of years ago.  But this
is too grounded in one city to have appeal to the rest of the country, let
alone the world.  I can't see a twelve-year-old in Peoria getting much out
of all the references; the setting of (say) THE HOBBIT would serve the
purpose as well.  A curiosity, but recommended only for New Yorkers and then
only as a curiosity piece.

					Evelyn C. Leeper
					(201) 957-2070
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