Just got Claire Zulkey’s first novel, AN OFF YEAR, a young-adult story from Dutton.  Really sweet story about a kid who chickens out on her freshman year of college at the dorm room door.  She just turns around and makes her dad take her home.  No stated reason.  She spends the next year working out whatever, very carefully never identifying anything specific that somebody could then force her to fix.  My favorite parts are the shrink sessions.  I have a weakness for fictional and cinematic shrinks.

Zulkey’s heroine is way true to life.  I want to slap her and yet I know I have been her, so I side with her anyway.