As Cool As I Am: A Novel [Hardcover]

Pete Fromm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2003

As a teenager left to raise herself, Lucy Diamond is a narrator with a radiant yet guarded heart. As she races at breakneck pace toward womanhood, everything is at stake for her, producing an urgency and dread that she holds at bay with humor and grace. But while Lucy charges ahead, her mother's youth is fading, providing a juxtaposition steeped with tension and love. Simultaneously embracing and resisting their similarities, both women's emotional vulnerabilities and their deep need for each other are revealed. Conveyed through dialogue that is both laugh-aloud-funny and true, Lucy stands out in contemporary literature for her large heart and inimitable grit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Spirited and sharply intelligent, if sometimes farfetched, this knowing coming-of-age story follows Lucy Diamond of Great Falls, Mont., for two years, from 14 to 16. They're turbulent years, but more so for Lucy because her parents, themselves married as teenagers, are both self-centered, trying to recapture the youth they feel they missed. Chuck, her father, appears only for a few days every few months; he is a charmer, and Lucy has inherited his humor and smart mouth. Though he claims to be a logger, it becomes clear that there must be other reasons for his long disappearances. Lucy's mother, Lainee, frustrated by her absent husband, has a long string of boyfriends, all of whom, like her husband, eventually disappear. Lucy, meanwhile, drifts into an affair with her best friend, scrawny, funny Kenny, whose divorced mother is an alcoholic. Then Kenny, too, is forced to move away when his mother loses custody, and Lucy recognizes she is in the same boat as her mother, her happiness contingent on the infrequent appearances of a traveling man. Lucy, clever beyond her years (what 16-year-old would think "It wasn't ten minutes before another bold five-year plan of abstinence lay in shambles"?) is such a plucky, proud, vulnerable character that the reader can't help falling for her. All the characters come alive, their stiletto tongues alternately wounding and caressing. Kenny, who truly loves Lucy, is sympathetic not just for himself, but for all the Kennys of the world who have little going for them but a kind nature and a true heart. When Lainee and Lucy finally bring their waiting days to an end, the unlikely conclusion owes more to fantasy than reality, but the emotions Fromm plumbs are painfully, poignantly real.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

A flat, lanky teenaged body and a closely shorn buzz cut are Lucy Diamond's most outstanding features. While Lucy doesn't feel she has much going for her in the "looks" department, pint-sized Kenny, her longtime jungle-gym playmate, sees her as the "goddess of cool." To Kenny, Lucy is incomparable and beautiful. To her parents, Lucy is the circumstance that caused them to marry so young. Lucy's father makes very few trips home and spends most of his time working as a lumberman in Canada. Her mother is happily prancing about town with a cheesy, horse-toothed co-worker in an eyebrow-raising relationship. Lucy is repulsed by her parents' overt sexuality and their marathon lovemaking sessions, but her relationship with Kenny is also taking a scorching turn in this direction and she wants to put on the brakes before she regrets it. Fromm explores the sexual evolution of a cynical teenage girl who has the spunk and wit to survive two flaky parents and the urges of unbridled adolescence. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (October 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312307756
• ISBN-13: 978-0312307752
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,663,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gritty, erotic and genuine, October 2, 2003

By 

Ron Franscell, Author of 'Sourtoe Cocktail Club' - See all my reviews

This review is from: As Cool As I Am: A Novel (Hardcover)

Just when "chick-lit" seems to have probed every female niche, Pete Fromm -- a guy -- comes along with one of the more startlingly beautiful and evocative tales of young womanhood in "As Cool As I Am."

Lucy Diamond's father is a wise-cracking lumberjack who says dumb things like "sharp as a bowling ball" and adios, amoebas!" and sends home lewd postcards from his job in a distant Canadian forest. He comes home to Great Falls, Mont., only a few times a year, and only for a few lusty days. And always, he buzz-cuts Lucy's hair.

Lucy's mother is present but often unaccounted for. With her husband gone and Lucy entering high school, she's taken a job and maybe a lover or two, leaving her daughter to contemplate life, love, sex and loyalty -- mostly her mother's -- on her own.

Lucy quickly proves to be a clear-eyed, graceful and immensely funny narrator. While she hurtles toward womanhood -- and all that entails -- she heaps insecurities upon uncertainties as she explores her own budding sexuality. But as Lucy blooms, her mother's youth is fading. The syncopation of their separate rise and fall provides the book's most tender and most trying elements.

Fromm's voice -- on loan to Lucy -- is provocative, gritty, erotic, hilarious and genuine, and this book is a fresh breath of teen spirit.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sometimes Implausible Coming of Age Novel, April 13, 2004

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: As Cool As I Am: A Novel (Hardcover)

As Cool as I Am is an entertaining, well-written coming of age novel with one major flaw in it. The story follows Lucy, the young heroine in the novel, from about the ages of 14 to 16. She lives with her mom while her dad works as a logger, visiting only intermittently. She has only one close friend, a boy with whom she ultimately has what is pretty much an implausible physical relationship with. He moves away, and she takes up with another young man. Lucy is a fairly complicated character and I think Fromm does a very good job with her, other than her relationship with the young men--that struck me as a male fantasy more than anything else. Still--the novel kept me reading--the story is interesting and entertaining--a quick and easy read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars interesting coming of age story, February 14, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: As Cool As I Am: A Novel (Hardcover)

I picked up this book at the library cause i liked the look of the cover. i found myself loving the characters especially Kenny who loves lucy so intensely with a love i think you only have when you're that young. the characters were old beyond thier years but it works because of the dialog and depth of the people. it was a rare library find that i think i may buy in paperback for my own home collection. i would definately recommend it for reading.