ENDLESS LOVE
by Scott Spencer Knopf;
418 pages; $10.95
Young love is a fanaticism inhabiting a region somewhere between the silly and the metaphysical. Scott Spencer understands the territory well: its shimmering landscapes, its enclosing solipsism, the profound and dippy magic by which children suddenly acquire passion. In Endless Love, the mother of one such adolescent says in rueful retrospect: "We felt as if we'd given a child permission to experiment with a little chemistry set only to find she was an undiscovered genius—solving ancient alchemical riddles, bonding once incompatible molecules, filling the cellar with luminous smoke."
In this third novel (after...
