Who Wrote the Book of Love?

The elder son of an actress and a doctor to the stars, lucky Lee (who is and is not the author) tells the story of his sexual education from kindergarten to his bar mitzvah in a hilarious mix of candor and naivete, while Siegel parses the absurdities of the good life, 1950s style. Precocious Lee plays cowboy, fears communists, gets into scrapes, covets cute girls, and discovers the thrill of lying. As always, mischievous Siegel revels in the magic of language while offering tart social commentary on everything from Jewish assimilation to racism to the atomic bomb, but never has his humor been sharper or his characters more alluring than in this shrewdly spiked, cheerfully erotic, incident-rich Hollywood coming-of-age tale.