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Summary
Summary
A provocative first novel that explores the porous borders between friendship, sex and love At eighteen, Cuzzy Gage has never been out of Poverty, the isolated mountain hamlet where he was born, raised, and--much to the annoyance of his dreamy girlfriend, the mother of his child--seems destined to stay. He is content to hang out and just get by; it's as if ambition hasn't occurred to him. Enter Tracy Edwards, who has come to the area after the death of his close friend, Algernon Black, an ethnomusicologist who specialized in initiation rituals. It's to Black's family estate, the Larches, that Tracy retreats, in grief and confusion, after his friend's death, to archive Algie's work. Through a set of circumstances that look like chance but turn out to be something else entirely, Tracy hires Cuzzy to help sort through Algie's papers. So begins a quiet and ambivalent relationship, one that eventually causes both young men to admit their own histories and to start to rethink the future. As Tracy introduces Cuzzy to poetry and literature and music, he in turn is exposed to the natural world, to a place of granite and schist and other, enduring, hard things. But in a small town their unlikely friendship is inevitably the focus of scrutiny and debate, a debate that ends as no one could have imagined, and makes each of them, in their own way, confront the hardest thing of all. Poetic and compelling,The Book of Hard Thingsis a bold fiction debut. Sue Halpernwrites frequently forThe New York Review of Booksand is the author of two previous nonfiction books:Migrations to SolitudeandFour Wings and a Prayer.The Book of Hard Thingsis her first novel. She lives in between Vermont and upstate New York with her husband, Bill McKibben, and their daughter. At eighteen, Cuzzy Gage has never left the remote mountain town where he was born and raised, and where--much to the annoyance of his dreamy girlfriend, Crystal, the mother of his child--he seems determined to stay. Content to hang out with his friends and just get by, it's as if ambition has never occurred to him. Michael "Tracy" Edwards is drifting, too. An English teacher from New York City, he has quit his job after the death of his best friend, Algernon Black, an ethnomusicologist who specialized in initiation ceremonies. Taking up residence at Black's family's rustic estate to sort through his friend's papers and write a narrative of his life, Tracy is very much alone. The deep woods, with its stark and powerful beauty, only serves to reinforce his loneliness. When he happens to meet Cuzzy Gage at the local convenience store, he is struck by the boy's knowledge of the outdoors and his comfort among the trees. He could use some of that comfort. He offers Cuzzy a job. So begins a quiet and ambivalent friendship, one that eventually causes both young men to admit their own histories, and to begin rethinking the future. As Tracy introduces Cuzzy to poetry, literature, and music, he in turn is exposed to the natural world, a place of granite and schist and other enduring hard things. But in a small town their relationship is inevitably the focus of scrutiny and debate--a debate that ends as no one could have imagined. Poetic and provocative,The Book of Hard Thingsexplores the porous border between friendship and love, and marks a bold fiction debut. "[Halpern's] work here is made especially memorable by the exactness of her tone in evoking small-town tensions, the often misdirected energies of youth and most especially the process of growing up and acquiring an adult sense of responsibility."--James Polk,The New York Times "Sue Halpern has written wonderful books of nonfiction, but sometimes nonfiction to fiction isn't a transition that can be made gracefully. Not only is the writing in her first novel
Summary
Pablo Ruiz Picasso viaja a Florencia desde París, su ciudad de residencia. En esa ciudad verá por primera vez un cuadro de Rubens Los desastres de la guerra que le causará una impresión duradera y que será el germen de su obra más reconocida: el Guernica. Ya de vuelta en París, la guerra civil estalla y, el 27 de abril del 1937, Jaime Sabartés, el fiel secretario de Picasso le muestra a éste la cobertura en los periódicos del bombardeo de Guernica. Esta noticia impactante y sobrecogedora, el horror por la masacre general tan bien planeada, trastorna profundamente a Pablo y sus amigos. El embajador de España aprovecha la futura apertura de la Exposición Internacional para pedirle a Pablo un mural y, aunque el plazo es bastante corto, el pintor acepta el compromiso. En La luz del Guernica, Magro ha conseguido recrear con lujo de detalles y profunda admiración una de las obras artísticas más importantes de todos los tiempos y, desde luego, la mejor expresión pictórica de una tremenda masacre.
Author Notes
Sue Halpern is the author of "Migrations to Solitude". Her work has appeared in "Granta", "The New York Review of Books", "The New York Times", "Audubon", "Mother Jones", "Rolling Stone", & "Orion", among other publications. She lives in a small town in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Polished and passionate, this debut novel by Halpern (author of the well-received essay collection Migrations to Solitude) is undermined by its unlikely premise: the friendship between a down-and-out backwoods 18-year-old and a 30-something cultural sophisticate. Homeless, aimless "Cuzzy" Gage has no job and no prospects in the tiny New England logging town of Poverty. His mother is dead, his father is in a psychiatric hospital and Crystal, his estranged girlfriend, is now the mother of his child. Some of these sad facts are meant, no doubt, to explain his utter lack of ambition and responsibility, but nothing can explain (despite Halpern's strenuous efforts) why Tracy Edwards, a Porsche-driving teacher with absolutely nothing in common with the local residents, takes Cuzzy into his borrowed home, the estate of his recently deceased best friend, Algie, an ethnomusicologist. Ostensibly, Tracy's acting on a request from Rev. Jason Trimble, who asks his congregation to be "real neighbors" to one another, and Tracy is searching for something to assuage his grief over Algie. But the alliance between Tracy and Cuzzy never rings true. Their intellectual differences are astronomical; their socioeconomic gulf is unbridgeable. Indeed, that gulf leads to a scene of horrific violence, which unfolds with a palpable inevitability (the best section of the book by far). The only character of real interest is Crystal, whose aspirations (culled from People and Marie Claire) are touchingly fantastic. Despite Halpern's often lovely prose, this earnest, self-conscious novel never manages to make real its juxtaposition of disparate worlds. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
What's more intimate and risky: genuine friendship or romantic love? asks first-novelist/nonfiction author Halpern (Four Wings and a Prayer, 2001, etc.). Troubled adolescent Cuzzy Gage--so-called because he is everyone's cousin in the pointedly named community of Poverty, in upstate New York--has been living in the woods since his uncle kicked him out of the house after Cuzzy slept with the uncle's pregnant live-in niece. His mother died years ago; his minister father is in a mental institution. About to turn 18, Cuzzy has already fathered a child himself, but the baby's mother, a clone of Luanne on TV's King of the Hill, has been refusing to see him, so he spends his time hanging out at the local convenience store with misfits like the cousin who may have molested his sister and the local bully/drug dealer. Polite society, which lives down the road in vacation homes, calls these folks trailer trash. Enter Tracy Edwards in his Porsche. He's staying at one of the largest estate retreats, archiving the papers of his recently dead friend Algie, a musicologist whose advances the heterosexual Tracy rebuffed long ago. Poverty's current minister, Jason Trimble, who's gotten to know Cuzzy's father, approaches Tracy and asks him to help reach the boy. Soon Cuzzy, attracted initially by the wealthy comfort of Tracy's life but hungry for affection, stability, and the world of ideas, is living at the estate and working for Tracy. The older man takes Cuzzy under his wing, trying to be a Good Samaritan, but his privileged naivetÉ blinds him to the impact of their relationship on the boy's position in Poverty. The result is a tragedy of shocking brutality, especially in contrast to the rather literary rendering of all that has come before. Carefully crafted and thoughtful, if at times overbearing in telegraphing its messages. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Just as a reader would expect from the author of Four Wings and a Prayer (2001), a captivating treatise on monarch butterflies, Halpern evinces a heightened awareness of nature and bracing insights into how place shapes people's psyches in her wryly funny, wholly entrancing, ultimately shattering debut novel about life in a small, poor, inbred logging town. Halpern's hapless but well-meaning 18-year-old hero, Cuzzy, has ended up homeless and unemployed, what with his father in a mental institution, his mother deceased, and his irrepressible girlfriend, Crystal, holed up incommunicado with their baby boy. Never in his wildest dreams could Cuzzy have imagined his involvement with Porsche-driving Tracy, a 43-year-old visitor deeply mourning the death of his best friend, Algie, a brilliant, and gay, ethnomusicologist. Cultured yet naive, Tracy, at the behest of a minister, offers Cuzzy a place to stay on Algie's fabled family estate, a job helping him sort through Algie's intriguing archives, and, therefore, an introduction to the wider world, but the local roughnecks assume it's all about sex, leading to a tragic confrontation. Halpern's gripping tale about life's myriad hardships astutely considers the dangers inherent in any cross-cultural exploration and the sad truth that compassion must be relearned at every step. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2003 Booklist
Library Journal Review
This debut novel by accomplished nonfiction author Halpern (Four Wings and a Prayer) is set in an isolated northern mountain hamlet called Poverty, which adequately describes the economic and spiritual condition of its residents. Cuzzy Gage, a young man with little hope for a viable future, is hired by the rich, educated Tracy Edwards, who has come to archive the papers of recently deceased friend Algie, a wealthy summer resident and a homosexual. Tracy's association with Algie makes his sexual orientation suspect among Cuzzy and his friends, but Cuzzy continues working with him and, in doing so, is introduced to both Algie's interest in poetry and music and Tracy's awareness of a world outside of Poverty. After settling Algie's estate, Tracy is brutally murdered by two of Cuzzy's friends. Thanks to his relationship with Tracy, we are meant to believe that Cuzzy has matured enough to understand his own passive role in the killing and the ways in which he had been living irresponsibly. But while Halpern offers an insightful glimpse of small-town fears and prejudices, the relationship between Cuzzy and Tracy is not well enough developed to elicit sympathy. Not required for most collections.-David A. Beron?, Univ. of New Hampshire Lib., Durham (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
