21 May 2006 HIT THE ROAD by Caroline B. Cooney, Random House/Delacorte, May 2006, ISBN: 0-385-72944-8; Libr.ISBN: 0-385-90174-7

"You got a fast car

I want a ticket to anywhere

Maybe we make a deal

Maybe together we can get somewhere"

--Tracy Chapman, "Fast Car"

"Brit had been there when Mom said to Nannie, 'Your eyes are so bad you can't tell the difference between a trash barrel and a two-year-old at the side of the road. Your knees are so stiff it takes you five minutes to brake. You have to stop driving.' Mom went right into Nannie's purse, fished out her driver's license, cut it in half and tossed it in the garbage. In vain, Nannie pleaded, 'Without a car all I can do is gather dust and stare out the window.' Because Nannie's house was three miles from a quart of milk, a committee meeting or a bridge game.

" 'I've hired an aide,' said Brit's mother briskly. 'She'll take you where you want to go. You won't even notice not having a car.'

"How could you not notice that you didn't have a car? Brit had been noticing that one all her life. She noticed every single kid who got their own car and every single one who didn't."

Now, months later, and exactly eleven days after sixteen-year-old Brittany Anne Bowman has gotten her own drivers license, she finds herself unceremoniously dumped--carless--at Nannie's Connecticut house as her parents head off on a trip to Alaska for a couple of weeks. But Nannie, who no longer moves very fast but is still sharp as a tack, has had quite enough of her daughter's tyranny and is ready to fight back in her own way. She and her three college roommates have formulated secret plans to hit the road together and attend their sixty-fifth year college reunion up in Maine. At that age it could well be their last chance.

But when Brit arrives, and it turns out that Nannie is too small to pilot the rental SUV that's, been delivered to her house, Brit suddenly finds herself behind the wheel of that GMC Safari, chauffeuring a pair of the octogenarians up through New England to a facility where one of the elderly quartet of long time friends has been fraudulently and involuntarily committed to an Alzheimer's ward by her money-grubbing son. Their springing Aurelia from Fox Hills Adult Community leads to wild chases, real dangers, and dirty double crosses.

Some of Brit's maneuvering involves cell phone conversations with hunky computer genius and aspiring filmmaker Cooper James, the young man Brit has had a crush on since seventh grade. (He is also the young man who hasn't spoken a word to her in months, since accidentally discovering that he was the unwitting subject of various documents stored in Brit's laptop, such as "Our Wedding" and "Our Honeymoon Plans.")

HIT THE ROAD is a total hoot. Author Caroline B. Cooney has achieved a very entertaining balance between the slapstick humor involving "the girls," the communications technology aspects that allow Brit's friends to be a vital part of the action without ever being inside the luxury SUV, and the story's a-ha moments, where readers will surely recognize how capricious treatment of the elderly by their adult children can seem so incredibly similar to the manner in which many young adults feel they are treated by their parents.

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com