COAST TO COAST: A Family Romance

Daughter of Hollywood producer/ screenwriter Nunnally Johnson and actress Dorris Bowdon, the author spent her childhood, after her parents' divorce, shuttling between parents and coasts. She eloquently evokes the 1940s and '50s: the war years and postwar Communist paranoia, bombed-out London and the enormous pressure on women to marry. Johnson also vividly contrasts New York, with its cocktail parties and cabs, and Los Angeles, with its swimming pools and chauffeurs. Intelligent, curious and troubled, the adolescent Johnson is absolutely privileged, except she doesn't feel at home in either family. This is a book full of superstars, and the confusion and loneliness of a child of divorce are amplified by the proximity of celebrities. When the teenaged Johnson and a pal attend a grown-up party, mean, drunk Johnny Mercer insults Johnson's bulimic girlfriend, and Humphrey Bogart comes to the rescue. At Smith, Johnson and Sylvia Plath attend a class together. Her descriptions of the poet are convincingly disturbing, as are those of talented classmates who abandoned bright futures for marriage. Eventually, Johnson herself succumbs, and in surprising contrast to the rest of the book's dreamy impressionism, she ends in high suspense, walking down the aisle in her bridal gown toward a man she doesn't love, unable to figure out how to say no. Agent, Helen Brann. (Aug.)

Forecast: Both this work and Kate Lardner's Shut Up He Explained: The Memoir of a Blacklisted Kid (Forecasts, Apr. 12) should attract a literary and film-oriented audience.