[Earlier] adolescent novels included adults who were often types and sometimes ridiculous such as Jane Purdy's father in Fifteen, who barked when her boyfriend called, but they were only peripheral characters. In Lisa, Bright and Dark, the adults do not play the typically remote roles. Lisa's parents are the villains and are as overdrawn as are their counterparts in a melodrama. Certainly ignorant and cruel parents do exist in the world, and I do not feel that adolescents should be shielded from reality. However, the credibility of characters is a traditional expectation in literature. (p. 22)

It is with Lisa's parents, however, where Neufeld loses his credibility as a recorder of plausible character. When readers are presented with a distortion or an exaggeration of adult behavior through the eyes of a teenager, one takes into account the universal struggle between the generations and looks for other clues before making...