Smithereens [Hardcover]

Susan Taylor Chehak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1995

Susan Taylor Chehak's compelling new novel, set once again in the heartland of America, pairs two unlikely friends in a dark tale of seduction and murder. It is May Caldwell's sixteenth summer, and life couldn't be more dull in Linwood, Iowa. Vaguely suicidal and haunted by half-remembered scenes from her early childhood, May is a girl waiting for her life to happen. And happen it does with the unexpected arrival of Frances Anne Crane, a.k.a. Frankie, a girl with too much past and nothing to lose. Together they seduce an older man as Frankie awakens all that May has been holding inside: the mystery of her uncle Brodie's illicit past, the painful truth of her grandparents' slow dissolutions, and her own emerging sexuality. Where Frankie leads, May follows, and what's left is a murder no one can pin, a family's buried past resurfaced in a wild night of mayhem, and May's safe world blown to smithereens in this unforgettable tale of betrayal and desire.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Chehak's darkly gripping new novel, May Caldwell, 16, narrates the grim yet lyrically told story of how pretty Frankie Crane, a 17-year-old orphan from Kentucky, enters May's life in small-town Iowa and turns it inside out. Seemingly ingenuous Frankie, who has been receiving contributions from the Caldwell family for years through a foster child program, arrives unannounced at their door. In short order she introduces May to pill popping, beer drinking, theft and sexual seduction. Only May's father suspects that Frankie's past has made her a desperate character. Despite his misgivings and May's knowledge that Frankie has a gun, the girl stays on with the family, to fatal effect. There's little that's new in Chehak's bad-girl-seduces-good-girl premise, and the conclusion of the two teens' deadly dance seems rigged for melodrama and shock. Young May's corruption is wholly persuasive, however, and cast in prose so precise that it seems cut with a scalpel (sneaking into the bathroom of an older man she admires, May finds "the leathery, lemony smell of him, the feeling of his presence... solemn and silent, shaving with that razor, scattering exactly those loose splinters of his beard"). Throughout, the narrative surges back and forth like a nighttime tide via flashback, present events and foreshadowing, pulling the reader irresistibly along. That some teens yearn for both death and life is common knowledge; here, Chehak (Dancing on Glass)offers a compelling and revealing take on that disturbing truth. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This dark, disturbing novel will send shivers down the spine of every parent of a teenager. Chehak tells the timeless story of a good girl, a bad girl, and the dangers of summer in a small town. Sixteen-year-old May Caldwell has a loving family and plenty of advantages, even though she's plain looking and unadventurous. Out of the blue appears Frankie Crane, the disadvantaged "orphan" whom May's mother has taken under her wing and unofficially adopted. Unfortunately, Frankie spells trouble, first luring May into committing small sins--smoking, drinking, flirting, and driving too fast--then leading her into more advanced misdeeds, like shoplifting, adultery, and arson. Along with May's transformation from good girl to bad comes the transformation--at Frankie's hands--of the entire Caldwell family, whose pristine, pleasant life is not what it seems. Frankie's presence releases the ugly, unsavory something that's been buried for years, changing the lives of May and her family forever. A hypnotic, disturbing, compelling story from a gifted writer, this book will be a welcome addition for readers who want something out of the ordinary. Emily Melton

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (June 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385477880
• ISBN-13: 978-0385477888
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,486,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Taylor Chehak is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and the author of five novels, including Smithereens (a Hammett Award nominee), The Truth About Annie D. (an Edgar Award nominee and New York Times Notable Book), and Harmony (a Literary Guild Editor's Choice), as well as a book of nonfiction, Don Quixote Meets the Mob: The Craft of Fiction and the Art of Life. Her short stories have appeared in Word Riot, Coe Review, Guernica Magazine, L.A. Under The Influence, Sisters in Crime 5, and The Chariton Review. She teaches fiction writing in the low residency MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles, as well as in The UCLA Extension Writers' Program and the Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa. Susan grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, spends as much time as possible in Colorado, and at present divides her time between Los Angeles and Toronto.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Nihilistic midwestern coming-of-age story, December 2, 2009

By 

Etre Simyre (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smithereens (Hardcover)

I purchased this novel (in the hardback) because of my interest in literature, the Gothic, and for its purported midwestern American flavor.
The entire novel reads in about 3-5 days I suppose for the average skilled reader. I read 3/4 of the novel in 2006, and put it down out of a feeling it was lost for plot and inside of itself, via its dejected teen protagonist May Caldwell. I pulled it back off of my shelf out of boredom three years later and finished it in a day, finally braving the tornadoed climax and stinging afterglow the book title tells you was coming all along.
So here's my haphazard off-the cuff reflection:
While I appreciated the etherial element, vivid imagery, progressive memory recall flashback technique, and the author's ability to acutely recreate human sensation, the novel felt overly engrossed in spiraling teenage nihilistic moral decay and the employment of that type of machinery that makes for a cheap thrill and quick read. Characters developed well throughout, but by the end of the novel I'm left with what feels like a hollywood gimmick; the author succeedeed in making 'smithereens' out of any ultimate accomplishment, and I'm not sure this novel can faithfully be considered literature.
Comparisons: is this a 1990's midwestern existential flirtation with the House of Usher? Or a postmodern bildungsroman ala Holden Caufield? Is Brodie really Lennie from Of Mice and Men? Or is the May Caldwell/Frankie alter-ego a Kim Boggs/Edward Scissorhands complex, and her mother Peg Boggs? Perhaps the novel pulls from many such archetypes...
Parental concerns: Vivid teenager seduction and sex/rape with/by an adult, strong language, 3 gruesome murder/manslaughters, several graphically depicted attempted suicides, irreverant teenager manipulation of parental figures.