Karen U. (editorgrrl) reviewed on + 255 more book reviews
This 196-page trade paperback is a quick read. William is a self-involved boy (and self-loathing latent homosexual). Sarah is so poorly drawn I have no idea what her deal is.
From Publishers Weekly
Player of confused but adorable Gen X Romeos in films like Reality Bites and Before Sunrise, Hawke, 25, is easily conjured up as a stand-in for 21-year-old William Harding, the disaffected narrator of this slim first novel, a boy-meets-girl, girl-dumps-boy saga set in a grungy New York of aspiring actors, writers and singers. That William, a college dropout and budding actor, falls fast and hard for Sarah Wingfield, who fronts a band, teaches preschool and is a bit "funny looking," comes as a revelation to him, given his history of using his good looks for quick sex. Sarah casts William's sexual yearnings?and his white trash boyhood?into sharp relief by reading Adrienne Rich, toting a list of rape statistics and refusing to sleep with him. Their doomed romance is intercut with William's memories of his parents' breakup, of talks with his best friend and of his overheated teen relationship with Samantha, who still flits in and out of his life. When Sarah suddenly, inexplicably rejects him after William returns from making a movie in Paris, he descends into self-loathing and homosexual panic?and trashes his apartment. His callow cynicism about women and his flattened out, '90s rendition of Holden Caulfield ("Samantha wanted to have sex. She wasn't doing me any goddamn favors") grow wearisome. But Hawke's emotionally raw account of a world inescapably contracted is oddly affecting and sure to make many a teenage heart go pit-a-pat.
From Library Journal
Plenty of 25-year-olds have written novels worse than Hawke's, but very, very few of them wind up getting published. When singer/love interest Sarah asks actor/ protagonist William if he likes acting, William replies, " 'It's the only thing I've ever been good at.' " Hawke's novel does nothing to introduce any distance between creator and character on this score, although viewers of his films might disagree. The story is simple. William moves to New York, meets Sarah, and takes her to Paris. He doesn't treat her all that well, so she dumps him. Along the way the reader is treated to so many mixed metaphors, confused images, laughable similes, and hackneyed, banal emotional moments that one can only stop laughing long enough to wonder how this material got past a professional editor. A sample from a sex scene in which William and Sarah switch clothes: "I walked closer to herthis woman in my underwearseized by a strong desire to make it with her, to burst through her dress, taking her like a Scotsman (I am part Scottish)." Or after an extended tryst: "The scent of sex was thick. I never wanted to take a shower again." Not recommended.
From Kirkus Reviews
A first novel by the young actor featured in the Dead Poet's Society has a lot in common with the world of his film Reality Bites: It's a young man's idea of hip romance, with plenty of gestures to satisfy teeny-bopper fans. Hawke's mercifully brief story is really an extended hissy fit over being dumped by the type of girl his narrator doesn't usually date--she's a bit plump, rather graceless, not beautiful by conventional standards. She is, of course, smart, which is important to 21-year-old William Harding, a working actor in New York City who admits he's got by on his good looks and charm. Certainly not his intellect--he's impressed by his ability to recite a long poem by Gregory Corso by heart in response to Sarah's reading to him from Adrienne Rich. His own mother warns him about the limits of life as "a handsome bullshitter,'' but William blunders along, full of his own importance as he lovingly records his every little foible and endearing personality trait, which seem to include smashing furniture when he's frustrated. Sarah, meanwhile, withholds sex, and hands him a tract on "Rape and the Twentieth-Century Woman.'' Pouting William must use a condom when the big moment finally comes. A Parisian interlude, where he alludes with false modesty to his career, contributes to their breakup--she realizes that she needs space, and William is sent packing, back to his beautiful, empty-headed girlfriend from the past--but not before reciting Shakespeare to Sarah from the street outside her apartment. This clumsily written novel takes itself very seriously, although it is mostly content to name but not to show: We have to take Hawke's vague descriptions of "brilliant'' friends, "great'' books, "stupid'' hair on faith, and then there's that "French'' moustache on a waiter in . . . France. Skip the movie, if there is one.
From Publishers Weekly
Player of confused but adorable Gen X Romeos in films like Reality Bites and Before Sunrise, Hawke, 25, is easily conjured up as a stand-in for 21-year-old William Harding, the disaffected narrator of this slim first novel, a boy-meets-girl, girl-dumps-boy saga set in a grungy New York of aspiring actors, writers and singers. That William, a college dropout and budding actor, falls fast and hard for Sarah Wingfield, who fronts a band, teaches preschool and is a bit "funny looking," comes as a revelation to him, given his history of using his good looks for quick sex. Sarah casts William's sexual yearnings?and his white trash boyhood?into sharp relief by reading Adrienne Rich, toting a list of rape statistics and refusing to sleep with him. Their doomed romance is intercut with William's memories of his parents' breakup, of talks with his best friend and of his overheated teen relationship with Samantha, who still flits in and out of his life. When Sarah suddenly, inexplicably rejects him after William returns from making a movie in Paris, he descends into self-loathing and homosexual panic?and trashes his apartment. His callow cynicism about women and his flattened out, '90s rendition of Holden Caulfield ("Samantha wanted to have sex. She wasn't doing me any goddamn favors") grow wearisome. But Hawke's emotionally raw account of a world inescapably contracted is oddly affecting and sure to make many a teenage heart go pit-a-pat.
From Library Journal
Plenty of 25-year-olds have written novels worse than Hawke's, but very, very few of them wind up getting published. When singer/love interest Sarah asks actor/ protagonist William if he likes acting, William replies, " 'It's the only thing I've ever been good at.' " Hawke's novel does nothing to introduce any distance between creator and character on this score, although viewers of his films might disagree. The story is simple. William moves to New York, meets Sarah, and takes her to Paris. He doesn't treat her all that well, so she dumps him. Along the way the reader is treated to so many mixed metaphors, confused images, laughable similes, and hackneyed, banal emotional moments that one can only stop laughing long enough to wonder how this material got past a professional editor. A sample from a sex scene in which William and Sarah switch clothes: "I walked closer to herthis woman in my underwearseized by a strong desire to make it with her, to burst through her dress, taking her like a Scotsman (I am part Scottish)." Or after an extended tryst: "The scent of sex was thick. I never wanted to take a shower again." Not recommended.
From Kirkus Reviews
A first novel by the young actor featured in the Dead Poet's Society has a lot in common with the world of his film Reality Bites: It's a young man's idea of hip romance, with plenty of gestures to satisfy teeny-bopper fans. Hawke's mercifully brief story is really an extended hissy fit over being dumped by the type of girl his narrator doesn't usually date--she's a bit plump, rather graceless, not beautiful by conventional standards. She is, of course, smart, which is important to 21-year-old William Harding, a working actor in New York City who admits he's got by on his good looks and charm. Certainly not his intellect--he's impressed by his ability to recite a long poem by Gregory Corso by heart in response to Sarah's reading to him from Adrienne Rich. His own mother warns him about the limits of life as "a handsome bullshitter,'' but William blunders along, full of his own importance as he lovingly records his every little foible and endearing personality trait, which seem to include smashing furniture when he's frustrated. Sarah, meanwhile, withholds sex, and hands him a tract on "Rape and the Twentieth-Century Woman.'' Pouting William must use a condom when the big moment finally comes. A Parisian interlude, where he alludes with false modesty to his career, contributes to their breakup--she realizes that she needs space, and William is sent packing, back to his beautiful, empty-headed girlfriend from the past--but not before reciting Shakespeare to Sarah from the street outside her apartment. This clumsily written novel takes itself very seriously, although it is mostly content to name but not to show: We have to take Hawke's vague descriptions of "brilliant'' friends, "great'' books, "stupid'' hair on faith, and then there's that "French'' moustache on a waiter in . . . France. Skip the movie, if there is one.
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