This book promised to be covering the period of my own youth, so I was looking forward to reading how someone else had experienced that time of rapid change and social upheaval and restructuring. The cover, showing dancing when boys wore a shirt and ties and actually held girls in their arms, was tempting. However, the writing style I found to be "jerky" and often I had to stop and re-read a sentence to understand what was meant. This book has a lot going for it, strong atmosphere and characters, but not easy reading and I think that if read a bit at a time you will lose the plot.