After high school, Caitlin travels the world and can’t understand why Vix, by now at Harvard on a scholarship and determined to have a better life than her mother has had, won’t drop out and join her. Blume knows the way kids and teens speak, but her two female leads are less credible as they reach adulthood.

Caitlin, determined never to be ordinary, is always testing the limits, and in adolescence falls hard for Von, an older construction worker, while Vix falls for his friend Bru. The years in between are related in brief segments by numerous characters, but mostly by Vix. The story of how this casual invitation turns the two girls into what they call 'Summer sisters' is prefaced with a prologue in which Vix is asked by Caitlin to be her matron of honor. Caitlin, on the other hand, lives part of the year with her wealthy mother Phoebe, who’s just moved to Albuquerque, and summers with her father Lamb, equally affluent, on the Vineyard.

Victoria, or more commonly Vix, lives in a small house her brother has muscular dystrophy her mother is unhappy, and money is scarce. In sixth grade, when Victoria Weaver is asked by new girl Caitlin Somers to spend the summer with her on Martha’s Vineyard, her life changes forever. The years pass by at a fast and steamy clip in Blume’s latest adult novel (Wifey, not reviewed Smart Women, 1984) as two friends find loyalties and affections tested as they grow into young women. Still, this is a vigorous, colorful narrative, a pleasant if unsurprising entertainment. There are obligatory cameos by everyone from Shakespeare to Dickens. These incidents tend to be announced portentously (``England's great Peasant Revolt had begun'') and the characters, to fill in the historical background, sometimes offer speeches packed with an alarming (and unlikely) amount of information. Interwoven with the private (and rather melodramatic) adventures of a half-dozen families over a 2,000-year span are most of the events that shaped England (from the Norman invasion up to the Battle of Britain).

This latest follows the growth of London from its origins as a Celtic encampment through its emergence as the Roman capital in Britain and on to its long climb to preeminence as England's (and, for a time, the world's) greatest city. Like the work of his likely inspiration, James Michener, Rutherfurd's novels are distinguished by admirable research and a propulsive plot. Rutherfurd, having celebrated at some length the growth of an English cathedral town (Sarum, 1987) and the turbulent history of Russia (Russka, 1991), offers a massive survey in fictional form of London's long history.

Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd