Prepare yourselves. [In "Looking Back",] Joyce Maynard introduces a whole new angle into the Gap Game. Remember the Generation Gap and the Credibility Gap and the Communication Gap and now the Great Watergate Gapola? Well, Maynard unloads one last Gap on us, the Generalization Gap, and let's hope it's the end of the load….

For 150 pages, Maynard scissor-kicks through media mania and yippie youth cults and over-solicitious Barbie dolls like Mark Spitz spotting the end of the pool. The '60s exhausted her and her generation, she tells us as her prose home movie rolls by, full of mood clues like hula hoops and Yardley slickers, Twiggy and Cheerios, sock-hops and SAT exams. The book is a cross of teen trauma and pop obituary, with Maynard playing Pancho to her generation's Cisco Kid. And for all the hype you've heard about her, Maynard is a fine writer who...