Chinese Handcuffs

Title:

Chinese Handcuffs

Author:

Crutcher, Chris

Subject:

Physical & Emotional Abuse

Sports & Recreation

Social Themes

Young Adult Fiction

Description:

Dillon is living with the painful memory of his brother's suicide -- and the role he played in it. To keep his mind and body occupied, he trains intensely for the Ironman triathlon. But outside of practice, his life seems to be falling apart. Then Dillon finds a confidante in Jennifer, a star high school basketball player who's hiding her own set of destructive secrets. Together, they must find the courage to confront their demons -- before it's too late.

Publisher:

HarperCollins

Date:

2016-06-28

Digital Format:

HOOPLA E BOOK

Summary

Then Dillon finds a confidante in Jennifer, a star high school basketball player who's hiding her own set of destructive secrets. Together, they must find the courage to confront their demons -- before it's too late.

Reviews (4)

School Library Journal Review

Gr 9-12-- There are enough plots here to fuel a soap opera for a year. Dillon Hemingway is a brilliant student and athlete whose older brother, Preston, gets involved with a motorcycle gang, loses his legs in a bike accident, and later blows his head away in full view of his younger brother. Dillon writes long letters to his dead brother to tell him about Stacy, who was Preston's girl and the mother of their child but who may secretly love Dillon, and Jennifer, star basketball player, whose father sexually abused her and whose stepfather, a madman, also abuses her. Dillon's mother walked out on his family some years before. So much for the beginning. Beyond the first chapters there are scenes in which Dillon sprinkles his brother's ashes into the gas tanks of the cyclists who corrupted Preston and in which Stacy uses the school public address system to announce that she is indeed the mother of Preston's child. Dogs are crushed by cars, the Vietnam War is rehashed. Characters keep asking ``can we talk'' and then prattle on with enormous presence and wisdom about the evils of society, their parents, all adults, their own sorry lot in life, and love (``There are so many crazy things, dangerous things sometimes, that we're taught to call love''). Jesus Christ is at one point called ``a heroic dude.'' Dillon is too much in control of himself and the other characters to be believable. The ending, in which Dillon single-handedly drives Jennifer's crazed step-father out of town, is contrived. There's a place in fiction for teenage problems, but surely not all in one novel. --Robert E. Unsworth, Scarsdale Junior High School, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publisher's Weekly Review

Dillon, 16, is a winning triathlete trying to live with the fact of his older brother Preston's suicide, which he witnessed. Preston left behind a girlfriend (and a baby) whom Dillon has always loved; he is also increasingly interested in Jennifer, the top girls' basketball player, a lifelong victim of sexual abuse by her father and later her stepfather. Carved out in straight narratives, flashbacks and letters to Preston recapping events, Crutcher, author of the well-received The Crazy Horse Electric Game , Running Loose and Stotan! , has written a weighty, introspective novel. Because of the book's complex structure, and because the issues are so gritty and realistic, parts of the resolution become melodramatic in contrast. Each characters' actions are undermined by the author's habit of introducing traits or quirks right before exploiting them for dramatic effect. Furthermore, pregnancy twice sets off suicide attempts. Nevertheless, the book is riveting despite those clumsy moments; like the triathlete who takes second or third place, the challenges and the dazzling effort displayed during the event more than compensate for a less-than-perfect finish. Ages 12-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

Human beings are connected by the ghastly as well as the glorious,"" the author says--and demonstrates--in this intense, painful novel. Teen-age characters have been knocked around in Crutcher's other stories, but not to this extent: Dillon Hemingway, still trying to recover from the effects of watching his older brother Preston commit suicide, meets Jen Lawless, a classmate who's been sexually abused--first by her father, then by her stepfather. The other woman in Dillon's life is Stacy, Preston's old girlfriend, who took a long trip after Preston's suicide and now has a baby she claims is her cousin's. Threats of violence--from a motorcycle gang looking for Dillon and from JeWs twisted stepfather--underscore acts of courage: Jen finally confiding in Dillon, Stacy announcing over the school intercom that the baby is actually hers. Told partly in long, articulate letters from Dillon to his dead brother, and partly in a third-person narrative with the point of view shifting from one character to another, the story has a patchwork quality. Stacy, Jen, and Dillon cut noble, heroic figures that, with the toe-neat ending, give this an air of unreality; even so, Crutcher probes so many tender areas here that readers may end by feeling exhausted and emotionally bruised. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

A winning triathlete's need to understand his older brother's suicide is complicated by memories and daring challenges.

Excerpts

Chinese Handcuffs Chapter One Dear Preston, Gotta tell you this feels weird. I got the idea from a book called The Color Purple, by a lady named Alice Walker. It's a good book -- a really good book -- but that's not the point. The main character didn't have anyone in the real world to talk to, no one she could trust, so she started writing letters to God, because It (that's the pronoun she used for God because she wasn't all that sure of His or Her gender) was about the only thing left she believed in. Since you've been gone, I've been running around so full of that day and everything that probably led up to it that if I don't tell somebody about it, I might just explode. Only there's no one to tell. I can't burden Dad with it; he certainly has enough other things to worry about, what with Mom and Christy having left and working his ass off like he's always done. And Stacy's got her own stuff to deal with about you. Anyway, as you probably know, I have a pretty splotchy history with God, so that leaves you. And why not? You're about the only thing I can think of that I believe in. I mean, man, you are real to me now. I can let down with you now because I know I won't have to take any shit back like I did all the time when you were alive. When people ask, I tell them that you escaped back into the universe by your own hand. Pretty poetic characterization for blasting your brains out, don't you think? Hey, I always was a man of letters. I've decided I want to be a writer someday, and Coach says (she's still the best teacher I ever had) that to pull that off, I have to write. That is the ulterior motive for writing you, considering the chances of your actually ever reading any of this. I think everyone thought I'd come back to school after your funeral all quiet and humble and keep my smart mouth shut and just graduate. People treat death funny, like they think after someone's had a close brush with it, all the humor is supposed to go out of their lives and they're supposed to get real serious about things. That's not what happened to me, though. In some ways I felt even more alive after you were gone, and whatever it is in me that doesn't like to get pushed around or take things for granted just because adults say them got bigger. Anyway, at the end of this year, when I graduate summa cum desperate from this jive time educational wasteland, there'll be some major backslapping and cap throwing by Mr. Caldwell and some faculty members, who -- looking back -- would just as soon have seen me graduate the same day I walked in. Caldwell is the vice-principal in charge of discipline now -- worked his way up from coach, through counselor, and he claims his position was created the day you and I enrolled. Man's got no better manners than to speak ill of the dead. It's flattering, but I know it's not true. I haven't had it any tougher academically than I ever had -- hell, since I've been here, I've pulled down more As than an aardvark in an Appalachian avalanche -- it's just that they've had to spend so many would-be educational man-hours trying to keep me under control. I have to say I sympathize to some extent; I have a pretty hard time keeping myself under control sometimes. But boy, they haven't made it easy. I might say that your having preceded me by two years as a drug-crazed biker hasn't exactly made my road any easier. But that was your choice. I haven't turned into a jerk or anything, at least not by my standards, but it's been real hard getting the powers around here -- especially Caldwell -- to understand my meaning, which has become important to me. There isn't much time. You taught me that. He's been so busy finding different ways to tell me what is and isn't good for me he never hears me. The message is pretty simple actually: Everything I am doing isn't good for me and everything I'm not doing is. Caldwell could certainly have saved a lot of energy by saying it only once. Hell, I've always heard him; I just never agreed. "Comedy is tragedy standing on its head with its pants down." Remember that? Somebody famous said it first, but I think you and I heard it from Dad, back when I was too young to know what it meant. I know what it means now though because I gotta say, Preston, I've seen about enough tragedy in my life to last me the rest of it, and sometimes when I can't find the humor anywhere, well, that's when I get pretty close to the edge. I guess that's where you were. I got your note. Real creative. "That time with the cat. Don't ever forget." You really went out of your way with the details. I guess you were talking about Charlie, right? I got it. When I showed the note to Dad, I didn't tell all, only "It's just about this cat we killed when we were little." I couldn't stand for him to know more. I tell you, Preston, even eight years after the fact, Charlie's memory still brings me to my knees. I've never been able to write him off as merely the victim of a vicious, senseless childhood prank. I guess you couldn't either. Chinese Handcuffs . Copyright © by Chris Crutcher. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.