The plots of teenage novels amount to the statement of a problem and its solution, which makes them puzzles or games, rather than genuine plots. E. M. Forster, in Aspects of the Novel, says that a plot is a narrative of events which arouses not only the curiosity of the reader but his intelligence and his memory. "Characters, to be real," he says, "ought to run smoothly, but a plot ought to cause surprise." But what could be more predictable than the plot of the ordinary teenage novel?

It is only fair to say at this point that some writers have a much better record than others in this matter. Mary Stolz, for instance, writes movingly in To Tell Your Love of the heartbreak of a 17-year-old girl whose first true love abandons her for no reason that she can discover; and by the end of the book...