Customer Reviews

Heart, You Bully, You Punk

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

 

 

I am so ANNOYED! I just spent the past four days completely engrossed in Leah Hager Cohen's "Heart, You Bully, You Punk." I couldn't wait to finish it and write a fabulous review on Amazon, because I thought it was one of the most amazing books I'd read in a long time. By the time I read the last chapter, however, I was singing a different tune.

Up until the final few pages, I was absolutely in love with this book. It's a very moving story about Esker, a quirky math teacher at a private New York high school who agrees to tutor one of her students, Ann, following a peculiar incident that leaves both of Ann's legs in casts. Esker eventually meets Ann's father, Wally, and they form an unlikely relationship that is largely based on their mutual loneliness.

Cohen's writing style is exceptional. The novel constantly shifts perspective among the three main characters, but Cohen manages the transitions with ease. The author reaches deep into the minds of Esker, Wally, and Ann, and the reader is instantly able to bond with these three very unique personalities. I was so eager to see how the story would wrap up, but I thought the ending was incredibly rushed and I am very pissed at the way Esker chose to leave things...why did she DO that?! I don't get it! And what the heck happens to the other two characters? Everything is so open-ended and I feel like Cohen completely ripped me off. It's a real shame, too, because I can't say enough good things about the first 200 pages of this 214-page book. I am amazed that a writer as exceptionally gifted as Cohen could manage to screw up what would have been a perfectly wonderful novel, all in the course of about a dozen pages. What a shame. (In spite of my anger about the ending, though, I still have to give the book four stars. The majority of this book is phenomenal. My suggestion is that you stop reading it at the point where the Winter Concert begins and think up your own ending...I'm sure it will be much better than what Cohen dishes out!)

This is the off-beat story of Esker, a 31 year old woman who, since her college years, has been haunted by a past relationship disappointment. The question of the story: will she allow a man to love her again? Interesting premise, but there are many problems with the way it was handled: the previous lover was so unloving it's difficult to empathize with the extreme loss Esker's felt in his absence; Esker offers so little in the way of emotional connection to the new man in her life, his continued affection for her doesn't make sense; the book never delivers anything in the way of character growth or change. Nothing happens here. She's unhappy in the beginning. She stays that way. A real disappointment. I got the sense the author was more interested in the way she used language than in what she was actually saying.

This novel is perfect. The ending is also perfect. After you've finished reading Heart, You Bully, You Punk, it stays in your mind, the whole thing in motion, so that you can pick it up on a random page and start reading, and still be enthralled, and understand exactly what's happening, see how well it's written, and grasp how everything in this book is just where it should be, reflecting and illuminating everything else. It's ridiculously well written. Far and away the most beautiful book I've read in years.

I must say I have never read a book by Leah Hager Cohen but this must take the cake! It is absolutely inthrawling. It used great imagery and at times made my head spin with flashbacks! I loved the book...until the end! I must say Heart, You Bully, You Punk seemed to end rather abruptly...but all in all its a rather good book.

This book delves into all sorts of love-romantic, parental, love of what you do for a living-showing that the emotion, like life, is never perfect.

To do this, Hager Cohen has drawn three intriguing, mostly likeable characters, and by interspersing chapters in the voices of Wally, Esker and Ann, we get cystalline picture of their characters and actions. Ann in particular is a luminous portrait of a teenager both insecure and brave, lovely and awkward, immature yet on her way to other things.

These people Hager Cohen writes about are far from perfect..Ann has a destructive habit of flinging herself from high spaces, Wally is a pushover, staying in a marriage that's long over, Esker shuts herself off from the world for reasons that don't really seem sensible, but thanks to Hager's gift, I could at least sympathesize.

Nicely drawn scenes, well-edited dialogue, and these three memorable characters...I really recommend this.

THis book is delightful, refreshing, an engaging read with many layers. Cohen's metaphors, images and referene points made me smile, pause, reach for a highlighter. My only complaint was that it ended too soon.