Too Cool - Hardcover

Brenna, Duff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385489714 ISBN 13: 9780385489713

Publisher: Nan A. Talese, 1998

Synopsis

Duff Brenna is an American original, whose two previous novels have won honors and acclaim: The Book of Mamie won the prestigious Associated Writing Programs Award, and The Holy Book of the Beard was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "engrossing and uproarious . . . nearly impossible to put down."

With Too Cool, Duff Brenna has written a tale with the feel of a classic. Set against the unforgiving landscape of blizzard-swept Colorado, Too Cool begins with the adrenaline rush of a high-speed car chase. Elbert Earl Evans, known as Triple E, sixteen years old, has busted out of reform school and taken off with his girlfriend, Jeanne Windriver, in a stolen Oldsmobile. Pursued by police, Triple E and Jeanne escape by turning off onto a backroads road, where the car eventually stalls, trapping the two youngsters miles from civilization in a deadly snow storm. In a situation of growing desperation Triple E is forced to confront the violence in his nature and the acts that have brought him to the brink of destruction--from his violent street skirmishes to the scars suffered in a reform school that was supposed to rehabilitate him, but trapped him in a struggle between two influential teachers whose own dreams of glory came ahead of his development.

Duff Brenna sensitively portrays the troubled Triple E as a boy grown too fast into manhood, struggling to control his explosive impulses, and discovering a vein of tenderness in his deep love for Jeanne. Gripping, disturbing, undeniably powerful, Too Cool is a near-flawless novel.

About this title

Review

Elbert--a.k.a. Triple E--Earl Evans, brings new meaning to the term "Problem Child." According to his teacher and unstoppably positive moral supporter, Miss Bridgewater, Triple E has "more poetry in his soul than he knows." That may be the case, but it's a long, frightening journey to wherever that poetry lies buried. On its surface, Too Cool follows our young hellion protagonist as he busts out of reform school and into the raging heart of a Colorado blizzard, where he finds himself fighting for his own survival and that of his faithful sweetheart Jeanne. Beneath that, however, Duff Brenna's third fictive endeavor is the tale of Triple E's lifelong trek across another frozen landscape--a seemingly hopeless past, present, and future populated by a drunkard father, shady friends, a little bad luck, a lot of bad choices, and a hopelessly twisted psyche, equal parts fury and seriously misplaced sexual longing.

Brenna isn't as engagingly psychosexual as Dennis Cooper or as humorous or hip as Denis Johnson. He does, however, demonstrate a special kind of bravery in creating his lead character. When Triple E isn't engaging in bad-ass posturing or self-hatred, he's beating the snot out of drunks, for a few dollars or just for the heck of it. He's not an easy guy to like. Given this, the wonder is that the prose moves along at a fairly steady clip, though the reader can occasionally feel as bludgeoned as one of Triple E's boxing opponents. --Bob Michaels

From the Publisher

"An unfaltering, unflinching, piercing look into a tormented youthful heart...brilliantly evoked...."--Richard Bernstein, New York Times

"Pacing his narrative with the suspense of a thriller, Brenna writes grippingly and with uncanny insight into the mind and heart...." Publishers Weekly, starred

About this edition

• Publisher: Nan A. Talese
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0385489714
• ISBN 13: 9780385489713
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272