PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster, 2/2005GENRE: Fiction
SETTING: Vermont/New York, USA
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: B-
FROM PUBLISHER: New York City, 1965: Two Manhattan prep school students, Carole and Naomi, make a pact to lose their virginity before graduation. Eddie, a slick Upper East Side dropout, is handsome, fatally charming, and more than willing to help the girls accomplish their goal. But on one bitterly cold holiday weekend in an isolated cabin deep in the Vermont woods, a horrifying twist develops in the plan. Before the night is over, a stomach-turning secret is sealed between friends, setting in motion a series of events that will have dire and far-reaching consequences.
Sweeping across decades, moving from New York to Vermont to California and back again, Lewis tells an utterly gripping, psychologically nuanced tale of friendship between two very different women, of the life-changing burden of a secret, the lies we tell others to save ourselves, and the lies we tell ourselves when the truth is too painful to accept.
MY THOUGHTS: Let me start by saying I have no idea what the title means and lots of other reviewers don't either. Something bad goes down in a hotel room and Carole wants to distance herself from it and from the other two people involved. She graduates high school, goes to college, drops out, and starts a new life in Vermont. She lives under the threat of Eddie revealing their secret. She can't escape him and he shows up a few times over the years to harass her and ask for money. Eddie's a terrible character, truly a bad seed, one you want to die off as soon as possible. I'd have liked some background on him.
The story was fairly interesting but I have more questions that comments about the story. Why did Carole leave college and want nothing to do with her parents? Where'd she get money to open a restaurant? Why would she contact Naomi after all these years when she wanted nothing to do with her past? Why did she tell her boyfriend what happened? He didn't need to know.
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