Early From the Dance (First Edition)

Adam Jenrette, thirty-one and a successful Manhattan artist, has been hiding from his past for too long. When a relative's death calls him home to North Carolina, he is pulled into an intense encounter with his own eighteen-year-old self and with the two most important people in his life -- Cary Kinlaw, his best boyhood friend, and Jane McCrae, the girl they both, disastrously, loved. And as he relives one incredible, heartbreaking summer from thirteen years before, he dares to recover what he changed his life to lose . . .

There are so many passages of fluent, graceful writing and sensitive insights in this second novel by the author of Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street , that some readers may be willing to forgive its vastly overwritten length. Th e story of a young man's coming-of-agestet hyphens per Websters as he suffers through a love triangle is both exasperating--self-indulgent, cliched and sentimental--and satisfying; Payne is a natural raconteur with a pitch-perfect ear and a flair for evocative description. Thirteen years ago, when all the principals were 18, Adam Jenrette, called A., and Jane McCrae were horrified when A.'s best friend and Jane's former lover, Cary Kinlaw, committed suicide after learning that the two had betrayed him. Though A. went on to New York to achieve fame as an artist (painting has played such a small part in his life as revealed in flashback, we don't believe in his career for a minute), inner demons relating to his mother's death, his father's humiliation, and his guilt about Cary, cause a near breakdown. He returns home to Killdeer, N.C., where he again encounters Jane and continues his downward slide, helped by large quantities of cocaine. When he isn't writing endless paragraphs of adolescent conversation full of raunchy language, related in "and I said, and he said" style, Payne creates memorable characters and puts some interesting spins on his story. Not as capable as Frank Conroy, to whom he will be compared, Payne may someday give him a run for the money. Literary Guild main selection; major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Successful 32-year-old New York artist Adam returns to his North Carolina home to confront first-love Jane and relive their eighteenth summer, when Adam and Cary were still best friends and Jane was Cary's girl. By the end of that summer, Jane and Adam had fallen in love, causing guilt that was only fueled by Cary's suicide three years later. In examining their feelings for Cary and for each other now, both finally grow up, arriving at a mature love that keeps them in the dance of life that Cary left early. Although well written, especially in the last chapters, this second novel (Payne's first was Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street , LJ 11/1/84) is overlong. It's also hard to care enough about Jane and Adam, initially so self-centered, to struggle through all their angst-filled flashbacks, despite the satisfying end. Purchase where demand exists.
- M.J. Simmons, Duluth P.L., Minn.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.