Kaspian Lost

Grant's (In the Land of Winter) acute ear for adolescent angst and a plot a step or two left of reality lift this coming-of-age tale a few inches out of the pimply preoccupations and surging hormones that dominate the genre. Stuck in an Accelerated Skills Acquisition Camp by his ferociously fundamentalist stepmother, Kaspian saunters one night into an Otherworld beneath a hill, where three wicked leprechauns lead him to an angelic libido-rocking girl in white. Waking four days later about 60 miles from camp, Kaspian spends the rest of the novel trying to preserve the memory of his supernatural excursion and piece together his personality despite being shanghaied to sinister Mr. Winot's franchised American Youth Academy in Virginia, near Washington. Kaspian hides his mysterious experience from all the adults who try to strip it from him--predatory psychiatrist Thera Boot, militant UFO expert Weeb Eugley, a well-meaning gay Episcopal seminarian, even an artist who specializes in comic strips starring photosynthetic bacteria. Grant scores some zingers on practically all of the phony strategies adults singly and collectively use to mold imaginative rebellious teenagers into prosaic clones of themselves, but his attempt to integrate all the theories about encounters with the Unknown bog down into a foggy, soggy Father-Knows-Best routine. Zippy language just isn't enough to carry Kaspian and his readers satisfyingly home from old Virginny. (June)