4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, April 1, 2006
I have a confession to make. I actually wasn't going to start reading CRUISE CONTROL for another week or two. After all, I had just read
Inside Out and
Stuck in Neutral in quick succession. I have a lot of other books on my reviewing plate, and I didn't want anyone to think I had a Terry Trueman obsession. But then I decided, "I want to read this book now, I probably do have a Terry Trueman obsession, and no one is going to stop me!" So...that's my story, I'm sticking to it, and now for the story of CRUISE CONTROL...
This book is billed as the companion book to
Stuck in Neutral, not a sequel. And for good reason. This book doesn't pick up where
Stuck in Neutral leaves off, although I would recommend reading that one first, if for no other reason than to learn the history of Shawn McDaniel and his family. CRUISE CONTROL is the story of Paul McDaniel, older brother to Shawn and sister Cindy, son of a prize-winning poet father who abandoned their family and a mother who works hard to take care of her children.
Paul is fully aware of the unfairness and inconsistencies in his life. He's the star of the basketball team--his brother is a veg, confined to his wheelchair and unable to control any of his movements, from blinking his eyelids to swallowing his food. Paul is always angry, even to the point of physically attacking virtual strangers--his brother is unable to show any emotion, at all from love to annoyance. He hates his father for leaving the family--and yet wonders what it would be like for him to be a bigger part of it. Paul's life is, for all accounts and purposes, messed up. As his sister, Cindy, puts it: "There's no way I'll ever believe that the problems a brother like Shawn brings to a family are 'gifts from God.'"
As Paul discovers that his father might not have left the family due to abandonment, as his feelings of rage turn to shame for a secret he's kept way too long, Paul realizes the truth that his mother has long known: "It's okay to love your brother."
CRUISE CONTROL is Paul's story, and it's just as heartfelt and genuine as Shawn's. I'm sorry to leave the McDaniel family behind, but at least it's with the feeling of love and respect, and not sorrow and shame.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An intimate look at the reality and power of anger and love, December 29, 2004
Terry Trueman does it again...brings readers an intense look into the heart and soul of a character without wasting a word! This powerful companion book to the award-winning book, Stuck in Neutral (a book that still haunts me), is told from Shawn's brother Paul's perspective. Paul McDaniel is very angry...at life, at his father, at his brother, but perhaps more importantly at himself - for a secret that is at the very core of this additional look at how one family deals with heartache and tragedy in very different ways. The reality of Paul's anger is at times difficult to watch with readers feeling the pain rage inside of him. Even with all of the anger, readers will see a loving side to Paul...the loving side that feeds his brother bits of potato chips and wants desperately to be sure that Shawn knows he is his brother. While not a sequel and a title that certainly stands on its own, Cruise Control adds another dimension to a story that continues to have readers talking and thinking about the potential for one life to mean something more than it appears on the surface.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A complex and moving companion novel to Stuck In Neutral, December 10, 2004
In STUCK IN NEUTRAL, Terry Trueman's 2001 award-winning novel, he developed a most unlikely narrator: Shawn, a young man whose body is incapacitated by severe cerebral palsy, but whose mind is more engaged than anyone would have imagined. Now, Trueman gives Shawn's older brother Paul a voice in the companion novel CRUISE CONTROL.
Paul is pretty much the polar opposite of Shawn: he is popular, gifted, a jock who can trust his body to perform at the highest level. He's also deeply angry, with a quick temper and a tendency to fly off the handle. Much of Paul's anger is directed at his father, a writer who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning poem about Shawn after he left the family, and now seems to use Shawn mostly for photo ops and talk show appearances. Paul, who deeply loves his brother (even though he calls him a "veg"), resents his father for abandoning him and for escaping the day-to-day realities of living with a profoundly disabled family member.
CRUISE CONTROL is sometimes a disturbing book, as when the reader is taken into Paul's head as he beats up a complete stranger, or when Paul and his equally angry friend Tim drive drunk. Although STUCK IN NEUTRAL was perhaps a more powerful book, in part because of its unusual and surprising narrator, CRUISE CONTROL is still a complex and moving portrayal, even with its more conventional main character. Although each novel can stand on its own merits, STUCK IN NEUTRAL and CRUISE CONTROL gain strength when read together, as they form a more complete portrait of a family dealing with the daily heartbreak of Shawn's disability.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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