Never Let Me Go [Paperback]

CHUCK ROSENTHAL (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2004 | ISBN-10: 1888996935 | ISBN-13: 978-1888996937

In 1964, Chuck Rosenthal was a thirteen year old boy whose dream was to make his grade school basketball team. Never Let Me Go tells the true story of how a college professor who coached grade school basketball as a hobby became the man who held that dream in his hands; became Rosenthal s coach and his mentor; how he made Rosenthal his student, his confidant, and eventually his sexual partner, and how that teenager, trapped in the cycle of loyalty, betrayal, denial, secrecy and abuse, found the inner resources to escape and take the first steps toward adulthood.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While accounts of childhood sexual abuse have become depressingly pervasive, Rothenthal's bildungsroman is so remarkable that it transcends its tell-all genre. A prolific novelist (My Mistress, Humanity, etc.), Rosenthal was 13 when he entered into a relationship with his basketball coach that began as an intense, tough-love mentorship and escalated, through "physical therapy sessions," into sex by inexorable degrees. What is so remarkable about his memoir, aside from its stunning honesty and its total refusal of self-indulgence, is the complex picture it paints of Dan Callahan, Rosenthal's coach, mentor, friend, confidant and abuser. A college history professor with a passion for the classics, Callahan is erudite, intelligent and appallingly self-deluded. His heightened understanding of others, matched with an absolute inability to recognize his own predatory motivations, makes him a masterful manipulator. It allows him to elevate his relationship with Rosenthal to a higher Aristotelian plane of idealized friendship, a friendship involving "the love of a man for a boy, the love of a mentor, erudite and wise, for an exceptional boy." Callahan assumes this role of altruistic mentor so totally that the horror one feels witnessing a boy's seduction, manipulation and abuse becomes strangely allayed by Rosenthal's eventual (and genuine) love for this man, and by their enduring friendship, even after Rosenthal has recognized Callahan for what he is. The book proper spans some eight years, and we watch Rosenthal's coming of age, the ways in which he comes to understand his abuse and the ways in which it permanently shapes him, with a sense of helpless inevitability. Rosenthal's writing, transparent and wholly unobtrusive, belies the tangled complexity of this relationship, and makes for an engrossing, disturbing and enlightening read.
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About the Author

Chuck Rosenthal is the author of six published novels:

LoopÂ’s Progress, Experiments With Life and Deaf, LoopÂ’s End, Elena

of the Stars, Jack KerouacÂ’s Avatar Angel, and My Mistress,

Humanity. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary

magazines including California Quarterly, New Kent Quarterly, Minotaur,

Quarterly West, HaydenÂ’s Ferry Review, Chicago Review, Western Humanities

Review, Santa Monica Review, High Performance, Denver Quarterly, See,

Volt, 88, the Norton Anthology of Flash Fiction and the

Dove-Penguin Anthology Absolute Disaster. He has been nominated

for a Pushcart Prize and the PEN West Literary Award. His screenplay

Cowboys and Angels was a finalist for the Sundance Institute.

He has read and lectured at numerous universities and appeared on

radio and television nationally and internationally. He is the fiction

editor for the Los Angeles Review and teaches narrative writing and

theory for the Syntext Program at Loyola Marymount University in Los

Angeles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Red Hen Press (September 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888996935
• ISBN-13: 978-1888996937
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #951,540 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:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Timely Warning to All Parents, October 30, 2004

By 

D. Anthony "Rachel's Mom" (Atlanta, Georgia United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Never Let Me Go (Paperback)

At times, this book is shocking. At times it was so disturbing, I had to put it down for a short period. Every page I found to be profound. I believe this book is the most open, honest portrayal of sadistic child abuse I've ever read. The author gives us a disturbing picture of how easy it is for someone to look professional and respectable on the outside yet be the complete opposite on the inside. It is very unsettling to think that both light and darkness can be found in same person. It is also unsettling to realize that the more educated and brilliant the predator's mind, the more easily the predator can connive, manipulate and cover his tracks, so that no adult would ever question his integrity.
This book was a real wake-up call for me. It gave me ideas about what signs to look for in my children should I suspect any kind of abuse. It gave me ideas on how to protect my children from this day forward.
I highly recommend this book to every parent with children under the age of eighteen. I thank the author for giving such an profound, honest, open and complete picture of what a pedophile really looks like and a complete picture of the murder of a soul which occurs in each child abused.
Most of all, I would highly advise any man who has ever been molested in any way, and to any degree, to read this book. I believe it would give you understanding of what happened to you, lessen the shame, and make you feel free to get the help you so deserve. Being abused as a child is a horror for girls, but I believe it is even worse for boys as they deal with more shame and questions about their sexualiity. This burden of shame and humiliation keep many men from seeking help. This book may be the key to the beginning of healing for every victim of child abuse.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique Look at a Common Theme, December 18, 2008

By 

daveray (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Never Let Me Go (Paperback)

Like it or not. This type of situation happens more than we'd all like to think. I have researched the facts of this case I can tell with an unbiased certainty that it is all true. It disturbs me to see people who still try to cover up for the man portrayed in this book. Just goes to show you how such a man is a master of persuasion and manipulation. To get a real story, warts and all, of an ordinary, respectable man and an ordinary, unsuspecting youth, read this. By far the most intriguing part about this account is that the villain isn't a classic villain and the victim isn't a classic victim. It will blow your mind. This isn't Hollywood, it's Pennsylavania.

Thanks Roscoe.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, December 16, 2007

By 

luvnola "luvnola" (greenville, sc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Never Let Me Go (Paperback)

This book is very powerful yet very scary. I could not read it all at one time. It terrified(s)and sickened me as to how easily a child could fall victim to sick people praying on young boys and girls.