Until Your Heart Stops - Hardcover

McNally, T.M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679418261 ISBN 13: 9780679418269

Publisher: Villard, 1993

Synopsis

"Stunning . . . Unforgettable . . ." Los Angeles Times
The unexpected suicide of seventeen-year-old Walker Miller sends shock waves through the small community at Gold Dust High in Phoenix. There's Joe Jazinski, Walker's best friend, suddenly faced with an anger he can't express; Edith McCaw, his nearly blind girlfriend, struggling with an emerging sexuality as frightening as it is powerful; Jenna Williams, the swim coach, wrapped in guilt and blame; and Roy Morrison, the driver's ed teacher, a recovering alcoholic who comes to realize that he may be incapable of love. Follow the lives of these four people, present and past, as each searches for meaning and reason in unexplained tragedy . . .
From the Paperback edition.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Fine passages of psychological insight and lyrical prose are often vitiated by murky philosophizing and a suffocating blanket of angst in this first novel by McNally (whose collection Low-Flying Aircraft won a Flannery O'Connor Award). The suicide of an Arizona high school senior sets off frightened soul-searching and further violence among his fellow students and their teachers. McNally examines the events through the eyes of four characters: Joe "Jazz" Jazinski, the school's champion wrestler and surrogate father to his nine-year-old brother; Jazz's timid, legally blind girlfriend, Edith McCaw; alcoholic wrestling coach/driver-ed teacher Ray Morrison; and his lover, swimming coach/history teacher Jenna Williams. All of them are moody and self-absorbed, burdened by the past and bewildered or anguished about the directions of their lives. In endless interior monologues that sometimes seem to move in slow motion, they wonder about the possibility of love and commitment, meanwhile feeling sure that they will be left lonely and abandoned. McNally writes sensitively about the emotional limbo of adolescence and the inertia of middle age. But the prose veers unevenly from the flat transcriptions of inarticulate characters' thoughts to such pretentious statements as "sleep is afraid of the darkness, which is why we have to close our eyes." McNally is adroit, however, at interweaving the details of their lives, slowly creating tension and building to a denouement of cautious affirmation. One hopes this gifted writer will improve his pacing and lighten his heavy hand.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

This disturbing novel shows how the public suicide of a high school student in Phoenix, Arizona, affects those who knew him. The story is esentially told from the viewpoint of four main characters, two adults and two teens, though third-person narrative is occasionally used to guide the plot. McNally examines major concerns of our age--drugs, violence, homosexuality, disintegrating marriages, and contraception--as they revolve around the death of Walker Miller. Though he effectively captures the feelings of uncertainty and self-doubt so common in both teens and adults, his complex, richly layered narrative requires careful reading to escape the appearance of disjointedness. Recommended for readers of serious fiction.
- Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Villard
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0679418261
• ISBN 13: 9780679418269
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 190