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The blurb on the back:

Phyllis Greenfield was sweet sixteen. She felt that life was passing her by.
So she snugged on her tightest jeans, ran away from her comfortable home and jumped a long-distance bus to the hippie crossroads of Haight-Ashbury. She figured she wouldn't have to hang around for very long before things began to happen to her.
She was right.
FURMAN, a young Negro acid-head, initiated her double-quick into sex, hippie-style.
ME, a mystic love-child, introduced her to the world of the protest-rallies.
SIGNAL, for whom love was a matter of vibrations, convinced her that LSD was the only ticket to visiting Inner Space.
Home still called her, but her new-found moral freedom was a fever in the blood...

Hippies, huh? Whatcha gonna do with them? Write a novel? Well, I'd rather you didn't, but unfortunately lots of people had a go at it, and this is one of the earliest attempts. It's also one of the more interesting, if only because of its author.

You see, this was the first published novel of Ernest Tidyman (1928-1984), and while it didn't make much impact, Tidyman himself hit the big time a couple of years later with a novel titled Shaft. That was filmed in 1971 - the same year Tidyman wrote his Oscar-winning screenplay for The French Connection - and a further six novels followed in the series about the black private dick.

But this is where it all started, and it's pretty inauspicious, not to say unreadable. The fact that the innocent heroine - soon to be corrupted, of course - comes from Bill Clinton's manor in Little Rock, Arkansas is about the only thing you'll remember from it.

ARTISTIC MERIT: 2/5
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 1/5
HIPNESS QUOTIENT: 5/5

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from the maker of:

Shaft

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