If the title [of Summer Girls, Love Boys and Other Short Stories] turns you off, the first story, cast as a series of unsent letters to a boy the girl writer is stuck on, will confirm the worst. It's pure teen-romance drivel. The title story is tuned to the same wave-length, though less sappy and possessed of more elements: 15-year-old Mary's doting older parents, her weak stab at independence, a charming boy who gives her rides on his motorcycle but openly admits his love for another girl, the boy's attractive father who eventually shocks Mary by kissing her, and her aching, on her sadder-because-wiser sixteenth birthday, "to still be fifteen—oh! To still be fifteen!" The other entries are so obvious and one dimensional that capsule summaries [would] miss no nuances…. [The stories in this collection] make their points with … unmodulated banality. Mazer's earlier short story collection, Dear...