Richard Price, with a raunchy humor that smarts from the slap of reality, writes of growing up Italian in the Bronx during the early Sixties. He focuses on a teenage gang called the Wanderers as they skirmish through playgrounds, candy stores, and deserted lots during their last year together.

[The Wanderers is] a snappily paced novel that beats with the rhythm of street patter. And the sewer-mouthed boys who spit it out are characterized with deftness and economy….

Though The Wanderers reeks of ghetto life, it is not just another first novel about the slums. It is, rather, a story about nothing less than the universal drama: growing up, getting laid, learning to cry "I am." (p. 52)

Susan Heath, in Saturday Review/World (© 1974 by Saturday Review/World, Inc.; reprinted with permission), May 4, 1974.