Cracks [Paperback]

Sheila Kohler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000

EVEN THE INNOCENT HOLD VIOLENCE IN THEIR HEARTS...A beautiful schoolgirl mysteriously disappears into the South African veld. Forty years later, thirteen members of the missing girl's swimming team gather at their old boarding school for a reunion, and look back to the long, dry weeks leading to Fiamma's disappearance. As teenage memories and emotions resurface, the women relive the horror of a long-buried secret. A stunning and singular tale of the passion and tribalism of adolescence, CRACKS lays bare the violence that lies in the heart of even the most innocent.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Put adolescents together in a confined environment with only minimal adult supervision, and bad things will happen--a truism in literature as well as life. (Think The Children's Hour, think Lord of the Flies.) But in Sheila Kohler's eerie, atmospheric Cracks, the bad things that will happen are not the ones you might expect, and the message is far more complex than just "Children are savages." (Although they certainly are.) Written in an ominously anonymous first person plural, the novel follows the 12 girls on the swim team at a South African boarding school. They include the jock, the pretty one, the brain, the fat girl, and perhaps most interestingly, the shadowy Sheila Kohler, a storyteller whose tales all "came to the same dramatic finale: violent death..." All of them are in love with the dashing Miss G, their swim instructor, and a "crack," as it turns out, is a crush--the embodiment of all of adolescence's formless yearnings:

When you had a crack you saw things more clearly: the thick dark of the shadows and the transparence of the oak leaves in the light and the soft glow of the pink magnolia petals against their waxy leaves. You wanted to lie down alone in the dark in the music room and listen to Rachmaninoff and to the summer rains rushing hard down the gutters. You left notes for your crack in her mug next to her toothbrush on the shelf in the bathroom. If you accidentally brushed up against your crack and felt her boosie, you nearly fainted.

When they're not swimming, the members of the team amuse themselves by torturing new girls and taking turns fainting in chapel, until Fiamma Coronna throws everything off balance. A breathtaking Italian princess, a first-class swimmer, Fiamma quickly earns the girls' enmity by becoming Miss G's favorite. Worse still, she shows no interest in her teammates at all, and the usual hazing soon escalates to something far more serious. Heat dust, frangipani, adolescent sexuality simmering just under the surface: this could all have gone terribly, terribly wrong. It doesn't, and Kohler's elegant prose is the main reason why. The girls may be overheated, but the author's language never is. --Chloe Byrne --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A group of South African women who were all members of a boarding-school swimming team revisit a shared and haunted past in Kohler's polished, compact and chilling third novel. Summoned by their old headmistress after developers threaten the school's grounds, 12 middle-aged women return to the rural South African terrain of their childhoods. They were the last to see the team's star, Fiamma, just before she disappeared forever into the barren Transvaal veldt around the school. Kohler's short chapters alternate scenes from the reunion with flashbacks to their youthful companionshipAand rivalry. The group includes Di Radfield, the team captain; the bookish Ann Lindt; Sheila Kohler, an American (who shares the author's name and her vocation); pretty Meg Donovan; and others only briefly seen. Their swimming coach, Miss G, guides the students closely and manipulatively, showing an interest that borders on the sexual. When Fiamma Coronna, an Italian girl who claims royal lineage, joins the team, Miss G exalts her over the rest of the swimmers, creating at first competition, then resentment, along with sexual jealousy. Kohler (The House on R Street) narrates the story in the first-person plural: "We always had cramps in our toes. Our hair was always wet. Our hands were always damp and cold and our fingers crinkled." The curt "we" and Kohler's clipped, effective descriptions generate an abiding sense of myth, collective experience and collective guilt. At the same time, these tactics prevent readers from growing attached to any one individual, asking us to focus instead on the novel's rich mood. The result is a narrative at once powerful and hollow, an extremely well-made technical experiment. Finding at last how and why Fiamma vanished, some readers will feel the experiment justified; others may feel she was never really there. (Sept.) Cahners Business Information.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Zoland Books (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1581950268
• ISBN-13: 978-1581950267
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,225,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly creepy for such a small book, April 15, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cracks (Paperback)

Compare this with Lord of the Flies, but with girls instead of boys. Set in South Africa and told in Sheila Kohler's inimitable elegant and dark style of writing, it's the story of a swim team in a remote boarding school, a story in which the girls' "coming of age" doesn't turn out as expected.
Cracks is full of memorable characters, including an Italian princess, but most memorable is the shadowy 1st person narrator who somehow manages to be within the story but without at the same time.

Wonderful writing.
Creepy story.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sexually honest and disturbing, April 8, 2000

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Cracks (Hardcover)

Remember when you were a pre-teen. Were you curious about sex? Were you curious about other people's bodies?

This disarming novel focuses on the innocence and sexual curiosity of a group of pre-teen girls who find themselves in a strange situation when the outsider of the group mysteriously disappears. They knew that their swimming coach had a strange obsession with her, but was she responsible for the girl's disappearance? The ending will shock you. It is a disturbing and sexually honest novel about the age of innocence and curiosity. The novel is utterly original. I highly recommend it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Suspenseful and original, January 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Cracks (Hardcover)

I couldn't put this book down. I thought the character of the swim coach was right on--the way she abuses her power over the girls, the hurt when she takes favorites. As for the sexual harrassment--unfortunately such things are still going on today. Very realistic and beautifully written.