The Hottest State: A Novel - Softcover

Hawke, Ethan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679781358 ISBN 13: 9780679781356

Publisher: Vintage, 1997

Synopsis

When William meets Sarah at a bar appropriately called the Bitter End, he is a few months short of his twenty-first birthday and about to act in his first movie. He is so used to getting what he wants that he has never been able to care too deeply for anyone. But all of that is about to change. And it is Sarah--bold and shy, seductive and skittish--who will become William's undoing and his salvation.

William's affair with Sarah will take him from a tenement on the Lower East Side to a hotel room in Paris, from a flip proposal of marriage to the extremities of outraged need and the wisdom that comes only to true survivors. Anyone who reads The Hottest State will encounter a writer who can charm, dazzle, and break the heart in a single paragraph.

About this title

Review:

Yes, it's "that" Ethan Hawke. Ethan Hawke the actor. In this slim debut novel, he tells a coming-of-age tale of a fairly unpleasant young actor from Texas named William who lives in Manhattan and is working his way through an ugly little relationship with a singer/songwriter named Sarah. William's parents married young and split up early and he's not too happy with the world at large. Sarah can't quite make heads or tails of her mother. The pair has sex in the bathroom and talks quite a bit about their relationship. It all has a certain ring of truth, but at this point it's probably safe to say that Hawke's movie agent will probably make a better living off the young actor/writer than Hawke's literary agent.

From the Publisher:

"Touching and engaging...Authenticity is what carries The Hottest State."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Hawke does a fine job of showing what it's like to be young and full of confusion."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Beguiling...full of the freshness of love and the agony of loss....Hawke is a good writer who has produced a worthy first novel. It pleased and moved me."
--Mary Loudon, The London Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679781358
• ISBN 13: 9780679781356
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208