Customer Reviews

As Cool As I Am: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

As Cool As I Am is a beautiful story about a girl entering young adult hood. While reading the book I felt the overwheming lonelines of Lucy Diamond. When I first picked up the novel and read through the first few pages I did not think it would be anywhere near as good as it was. I have read hundreds of books in my day and this is in my top five. I absolutely adore the writer and I miss reading about Lucy everyday. I cried, I laughed, I felt feeling I have never felt before. I became so connected to the storyline; the sadness, embarrasment, happiness completely overcame me. Reading As Cool As I Am was one of the most amazing stories I have ever read.

At first, I really liked this book. The narrator, a girl who goes from 14 to 16 throughout the course of the novel, seemed quite realistically drawn - particularly since she was created by, from the base of the author photo, a middle-aged man. I even think that he, for the most part, did a good job drawing out the mother-daughter relationship. And, oddly enough, it is the male characters who hovered at the edge of this novel, never really fully fleshed out. It was the ending that spoiled the book for me. The book was leading somewhere, but certainly not where it ended up in the last twenty or so pages of the book.
Still, the author did an impressive job. The story unfolded well and was certainly riveting. It also did a good job handling the "high school experience." I did enjoy reading it and would most definitely read another book by the author. It will be interesting to see where he goes next.

I have to admit an unfair prejudice against overtly sexual works by grown men written from the viewpoint of young women. I'll read the reverse (i.e. The Way I Found Her by Rose Tremain) without a peep, but when a man does it, I am hypercritical and suspicious. I'm not saying it can't be done, and done well, I'm just saying I stand there as a judgmental jury of one, waiting for the writer to get it wrong.

As Cool As I Am is almost entirely about sex. And it's told entirely from the viewpoint of Lucy Diamond, a sarcastic fifteen year-old in Montana. As the story begins, she's androgynous, tall and flatchested ("all the figure of a snake") with a shaved head and a predilection for hanging out on the monkey bars with her best friend, a short kid with a strong sense of humor and a stronger sense of honor named Kenny. But the snake is in the garden, and it's this developing body of Lucy's.

Lucy's coming of age is hilarious, fumbling, fevered, realistic and endearing. It happens against the backdrop of her parents' marriage, an arrangement in which her father is gone for months on end, returning home now and then to subdue her voluptuous mother from one end of the house to the other. It's a heated atmosphere--all three members of the family are funny, libidinous, and absolutely clueless about how to put a family together. They do the best they can, but it leaves Lucy with far too much time on her hands to continue her sexual explorations with boys. Her mother has secrets of her own, and they are drawn into unwilling collusion to keep the balance so each can have what she wants. And that, apparently, is sex.

As I said, I should probably hate this book because of my unfair prejudices against the idea of a man writing from inside women's lives like this. But Fromm does it well. I adored Lucy, Kenny, Lucy's parents, and found the other characters sweetly drawn, especially Tim. Tim really broke my heart. Ah, the boys of my youth.

But there's an important subplot that doesn't really ring true to me. Whether it's fair, sexist, outdated or wrong, the fact remains that much of a woman's personal power is derived from her sense of her own sexual attractiveness. As Lucy develops into a young woman of staggering physical beauty, her mother faces the fading of her own looks because I guess at thirty-three she's withering on the vine. It's necessary to how the plot develops, but I didn't buy it, even though Lucy herself gets visual confirmation of the erosions of gravity on her mother's body. A woman like Lainee Diamond is just coming into her own at thirty-three.

I wish the truth of one of her father's allegations had been explored or revelaed, but I liked the ending. I think the word "farfetched"appears in other reviews here, and I have to agree. But the farfetched aspects of Lucy Diamond's story keep it interesting and fun to read. I literally could not put this one down until I finished it. Just be warned, the story, like Lucy, is very funny and very sexual and very sad. If you like that in a main character, you'll probably love this book.

This is one of the best books that I have ever read. (again and again). It is shocking, and suprising. This is not your typical ANYTHING. This is more than a coming of age, more than a book about a troubled family.
You dont need to be any age to love this book and to identify with the young girl.
I have lent this to many friends, all from different walks of life,and they have all come back telling me how amazing this book was.
The only part that I have trouble with is the ending. I NEED more! I need to see the rest of the story, and the rest of her life. It is quite the cliff hanger.

I thought this book was amazing and actually very plausible. It's depressing as well, but a good read. Lucy Diamond and her mother are dynamic characters and their relationship is very real. I'd recommend this to people of all ages. I read it first when I was eleven and quite unsuspecting, but it certainly opened my eyes to some realities of which I was previously unaware.

The book held my interest & I'm always amazed that a male writer can get into the head of a female teenager. This family was certainly atypical & the main character a feisty youngster with a sharp wit. She shows her independence while trying to grasp a role model-her parents are not to be admired.

How do you face the realization that your parents really didn't want to raise you, and at any moment may stop trying altogether? Lucy Diamond sparkles with sarcastic humor and raw wit through the heart breakingly honest truth that unfolds before her eyes as she blossoms into womanhood. Pete Fromm is the author of "As Cool As I am", a gritty yet charming story of Lucy Diamond shining on while her heart takes a stomping from her nearly absent mother Lanie and father Chuck.

We meet Lucy as an almost boyish adolescent, with her freshly shaved head, chasing her father's pickup truck down the street as he leaves again to "send home the bacon". As a logger, Chuck follows the work, while Lucy and Lanie are left alone for long periods of time to fend for themselves. Lucy transforms in a matter of months from slat to saucy, like her mother, and the teenage boys start going crazy for her. The only adult guidance in Lucy's life is her lonely and disenchanted mother, who stays out late with what Lucy refers to as "uncles". This aggravates the mother-daughter relationship, especially when Lucy has to cover for Lanie on Christmas when Chuck calls and Lanie is out on a date, because both fear Chuck's reaction. One of the most fiery moments in the book is after Chuck has been gone for over a year, and returns catching Lucy having sex with her boyfriend. The boyfriend easily fends off Chuck, but Lucy is not so lucky, sporting a black-eye. The sting of the smack to the face couldn't hurt half as much as what Chuck tells Lucy, a twist in the story that will make your jaw drop.

I admired Lucy for her strength and intelligence throughout the story, and could understand Lucy's feelings about sex. To Lucy, it seemed she felt it was a tool or way to control the men around her, and escape from loneliness. Naturally, this is what Lucy saw her mother Lanie doing, and it seemed inevitable for Lucy to subconsciously pick up the characteristic. All in all, this was a deep and profound story of Lucy growing up, and growing into herself. The book is full of salty phrases, real characters you will never forget, and will leave you with an endless connection to the one and only Lucy Diamond, the coolest chick since bread came sliced.