The novel takes place at the end of the Eisenhower administration and the beginning of the Kennedy era. It is set in Orange County, California. Bob and Jen are the children of parents who entered the middle class after World War II. Life for these kids has not reached the level of affluence the professional class knows. Life, especially for middle-class (white) kids is often boring. Anticipating life after high school, kids are concerned with finding work or going to college or into the military. Much of the sex is erotic, although other parts read more clinically (as in: Oh, I see. If I do this, he will do that.

Or, if I do that, she'll do this.) If, for Bob and Jen, sex is at first a way of exploring the adult world, it soon becomes a way to defy the world. But the world intrudes. Bob worries about money, the recession, and finding and holding a job. The book emphasises the kinds of unskilled-labour jobs Bob finds, the people he meets, and his anxiety when he is out of work. While sex with Jen and his growing love for her are immeasurably important to Bob, so is his desire to write and travel, "to learn how the world works". Jen and that imagined life are rivals. Bob knows this, but wants both.

Jen doesn't see herself as a rival to Bob's future, but as a part of it. Even more than Bob does, she sees herself as a sexual being. Both characters grow increasingly complex as they gain experience of the world. While their relationship ends, or appears to end, each of them moving toward a different way of living in the world, we can say, ultimately, not that love conquers all, but that it endures, whether or not we will it, despite the world and despite ourselves. This is a pre-feminist novel in that while feminism has not yet become a movement in the years most of this story occurs, many of the issues that feminism is concerned with are depicted in rudimentary form in this book.