Edgy and incisive, [in "Looking Back" Maynard] stated, no, proved, that the most difficult task facing the teenager today was to keep from growing up old. Public reaction was incredulous….

That edge is gone now….

[Baby Love's] "modern" tone is fashionably uninflected; in direct contrast to her earlier work, it deals almost entirely with sexual matters observed with unbearable clarity, as if someone had taken an Ann Beattie novel and drawn dirty signs all over it.

Now, no one works better in this close style than Beattie, who follows her characters through situations other writers despair of describing…. But when the people in Baby Love aren't having sex, Maynard loses interest and cuts away. Therefore it's too easy not to empathise with them; there are too many people and they haven't got anything else in common.

The only character of abiding interest, with any sort of interior...