FICTION

BECAUSE OF YOU b y Lisa Walker (Viking: $18.95; 221 pp.). Character development and plot both take a back seat in this first novel about a girl growing up; sex and humor are at the controls. Misty is incredibly boy-crazy; she goes through boyfriends like some girls go through chocolate candy. Walker has a good ear for the attitude of adolescence; Misty mentions her mother’s “fake calm voice”; she shrugs off getting raped in a closet; she brags that the only time she’s unfaithful to a current boyfriend is toward the end of a relationship. There’s an undercurrent of waste and despair in Misty’s life, parents who despise each other, shallow friends, a lack of passion. But this is adolescence--self-centered, scattered, resentful. The story is dumb and decadent, but often funny, and every once in a while, something important gets said.