Books: High-School Idiom

RIVER RAT—Daniel Lundberq—Rey-nal & Hitchcock ($2.50).

River Rat is the story of a high-school senior in Dedham, Mass., where U. S. 1 crosses the Charles River. A first novel, it is a notable success on two counts. It conveys a sense of its river locale as sharply and effortlessly as a good photograph. It also rings true and funny as a story of adolescence.

Ralph Blood, the senior (and narrator), is definitely not the clean-cut type—at least he would hate to think so. He reads Freud and Will Durant and Walter B. Pitkin; when his...