Customer Reviews

Speak Softly, She Can Hear

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

When I find myself staying up reading past my bedtime, it's a sure indicator that the book I'm holding is at least a 4 rating. The plot of this novel drew me in quickly, right from the first few pages, and the scenes and action moved along at a good pace through the book's end.

Without giving away the ending, let me say that the fate of the evil Eddie was highly satisfying and, while other reviewers' complaints about the heroine, Carole, do resonate with me, I did not ultimately find her tiresome. Rather, I liked watching her reach the boiling point and finally taking sweet revenge on Eddie for tormenting her all those years.

In some ways, this book reminds me of two others I enjoyed: The Secret History by Donna Tart and The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman, both of which tell stories of young people with dark secrets.

Tart's book is truly superior and a 5 all the way, but I can see how Lewis might eventually work up to writing of Tart's quality, especially given her talent for characterization. The heroine's hippie friend, Rachel, for instance, is so like women I knew in the 60s that I felt I almost knew her personally.

Speak Softly, She Can Hear is a very good debut novel that is worthy of your attention if you enjoy well-written suspense stories.

Carole Mason is a fat, unpopular teen at New York's prestigious Spence School, presented here as a nest of vipers a la MEAN GIRLS, who has one girlfriend, Naomi, a Park Avenue wild child with Paris Hilton appetites.

The year is 1965, at the brink of the sexual revolution, when Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick were bona fide celebrities of cafe society. Carole and Naomi start an innocent bet to see which of them will lost her virginity first to the attractive young actor, Eddie Lindbaeck, a boy will go down in thriller history as one of the most menacing villains since Sydney Greenstreet played Count Fosco in THE WOMAN IN WHITE. In a snowy ski camp in Stowe, Vermont, Carole stumbles into an awful trap and wakes up believing she has killed a local. The rest of the book develops her strategies for putting this murder behind her.

Like a heroine from Cornell Woolrich, Carole Mason is literally trapped by her past. Pam Lewis has a talent for suspense, and the book will keep you up all night trying to figure out how poor Carole will stay one step ahead of both the police and her savage "friends" Naomi and Eddie.

The story continues for years, through the summer of love in the Haight-Ashbury, to a Moosewood-like restaurant in the New England countryside in the 1970s. Actually I don't know why Ms. Lewis didn't set the novel at a more recent time, there's actually no reason why the book had to be set in the 1960s, and her anachronisms are sometimes grating. (Would a girl describe another girl as dressing "like Tricia Nixon" in 1965? I don't think so. Did young men snap, "Whatever," in 1975, or was that usage a byproduct of the Valley Girl-speak of the early 1980s?)

Every time I saw the words "Carole Mason," I thought of the esteemed experimental novelist "Carole Maso" who teaches at Brown, and I wondered if Pam Lewis was pointing some kind of admonitory finger at Maso. But that's just me.

The publishers are marketing this book like it's some kind of cross between Donna Tartt and other famous writers (the book jacket and the book title just scream, "Hi, I'm by Mary Higgins Clark"!) but Lewis' talent is resolutely her own, and even though you may want to shake Carole Mason for being such a ninny, no one with a heart can deny her sympathy, and the scenes in which she learns to love and give trust have a genuine pathos, and an honesty that's hardwon and feels real. I hope Pam Lewis comes to San Francisco so I can shake her hand and congratulate her for having made such a disturbing and shivery debut.

This is the story of a 16 year old girl who's made a terrible mistake, and has to live with it and pay for it for the next ten years of her life.

The story is well written with characters who stick with you. You follow the main character through her journey to try to let go of something that is bigger than her. It is a thriller but it also touches on some issues we can all relate to, like cliques and friends, lying when it'll make things worse, friendship, etc. It's scary all right, and Pam Lewis puts in enough twists and turns to make you want to keep on reading all night.

I really enjoyed that book a lot and would highly recommend it to anyone.

I would be lying if I didn't admit to being initially attracted to this book because of it's unique, intriguing cover. I have never seen a book jacket look that "cool"! So based on that, and reading the book summary inside, I took the plunge. I was not disappointed. I read this book over two days, and with all the snow and talk of "Vermont winters", it was a great way to cool down on these past 100+ degree August days. For a first novel, the author did a great job fleshing out the main character of Carole Mason. How a bad error in judgment by a 16 year old high school student ended up dictating the next 10 years of her life. The reader could actually feel the burden Carole carried around with her each and every day. "Eddie" was truly a character we could all loathe as well. Naomi on the other hand, was a bit sketchy in my eyes. I never did get a real feel for that character like I did the others. Nonetheless, it was a wonderful, coherent read, and I do recommend it!

Anyone who came of age in the 1960s will be able to read SPEAK SOFTLY, SHE CAN HEAR and readily identify characters who they have encountered in their own lives. There's the woman in the floor-length skirt who was always reading Mother Earth News and growing her own food, even in the middle of the city; the black journalism student who was always hanging out with the white kids, attaching some sort of unspoken faux liberal legitimacy to their mutual association; the trust-fund Rastafarians who are with us even to this day; and then there are the people on the fringes, the ones who always had the dope from unknown sources, who were popular but questionable, with just a hint of the scent of danger wafting about them. All of them are present in Pam Lewis's debut novel.

If one were to engage in a word association test and used the term "the '60s," I believe that the two top responses would be "free love" and "anti-war." The catalyst for SPEAK SOFTLY, SHE CAN HEAR is, indirectly, the former of those two. Carole Mason is a sixteen-year-old senior, a newly minted student at a private, prestigious high school in New York City. Carole is overweight (though a better way to describe her would be to say that her height is too short for her weight) and she has never been kissed, a social stigma in freewheeling, freebooting 1965. She also has entered the school too late to ensconce herself in an established clique and, accordingly, is a de facto outcast.

Enter Naomi, an anti-social wild child who teaches Carole how to smoke, shoplift and, hopefully, "score." Naomi introduces Carole to Eddie Lindbaeck, an evil knight who stands ready and willing to help Carole lose her virginity during an erstwhile skiing trip set up precisely for that purpose. The reader meets Eddie on the first page of the novel, and Lewis does a simply magnificent job of describing him through Carole's perspective. We know almost immediately, based on Carole's description of him, that he is a cad, even if Carole herself isn't aware of this. What occurs on the night of Carole's "score" will haunt her and affect her every waking moment for years to come, as well as bind her, Naomi and Eddie in an uneasy and dangerous triangle from which Carole will try, continuously and unsuccessfully, to escape.

The magnificence of Lewis's plotting here cannot be understated. Consider Carole's life to be a house, with each day a different room. Both she and the reader never know when Eddie, quietly malevolent and boiling with a barely checked rage of unknown origin, will come a-calling. Interestingly enough, Eddie only appears in a relatively few number of scenes, but he is a lurking presence behind every word in the book. As the story speeds suddenly toward its denouement, Eddie's capacity for evil becomes fully revealed, and while it is not surprising in its extent or degree, it is nonetheless shocking and riveting.

Lewis has created a haunting work that does not comfortably fit into any particular genre but that easily can be embraced by several. While SPEAK SOFTLY, SHE CAN HEAR will resonate most strongly with middle-aged baby boomers, it is a cautionary tale for the ages to which readers of all generations will relate. Recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Well written for a first novel. Recommend this book for those who enjoy a well written book with a bit of a twist. I look forward to Ms Lewis's next book.

In 1965 New York City Carole, an overweight shy student is determined to lose her virginity before she begins Vassar. Her best friend Naomi arranges for Carole to meet twenty-six year old Eddie in Vermont so he can teach her about sex. Carole gets very drunk so that when Rita appears for a ménage a trois she does it. Carole remembers little except that Rita is dead and Eddie claims she broke her neck.

From that day forward, Carole's life is never the same. Eddie blackmails her for money and her parent's valuables. She runs away to San Francisco and lives in a commune with her friend Rachel and her son Pepper when Eddie once again shows up to terrorize Carole and even hits Pepper, scarring him for life. The small family relocates to Montpellier, Vermont where Carole opens a restaurant and moves in with the love of her life. She thinks she is safe until Naomi and Eddie arrive and their unholy triangle explodes in violence leaving two people dead and one severely injured.

Carole is a vulnerable and frightened person but readers won't feel sorry for her because she allows herself to be a victim, first by letting Eddie intimidate her and then by causing her parents' untold grief when she runs away. Eddie is a true sociopath a remorseless stalker who enjoys tormenting Carole; he also keeps tabs on her so he can hurt her some more. Pam Lewis' debut novel is a chilling thriller, full of non-stop action that grips readers so much that they will finish this novel in one sitting.

Harriet Klausner

I was glad to see mixed reviews on this book. It started out slow and stayed slow and then got even slooooooooooooower. The characters did not make sense and the plot was incomplete and dull.

Carole, the main character, really irritated me! Yes!, she was put in a horrible situation, Yes!, she was taken advantage of, Yes!, she was stalked but wow, the woman had no backbone or, it seemed to me, brains!

Why move back to the area where the crime took place? Why be sooo nice to Eddie and Naomi? Why not be tougher? Carole seemed to get her act together after she left college, taking on a new life, working hard, but then she seemed so wishy-washy. I guess if I was totally scared to death of two people and of the crime we had committed I wouldn't be so bold either, but she was just super ditzy and a pushover. Take charge, Carole, stand up for yourself.

And why not really go underground if it was so easy for Eddie and Naomi to keep finding her? It just was too blah!!!!!

Everything in this book just seemed shallow. It WAS a great idea for a book, but it just never got going. I don't know why I even finished it, I guess I just wanted to give it a chance.

Some people loved it, you may want to check it out. If you ask me though, I would say sorry, it's not worth your precious time.

Thanks -- Pam

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a sucker for books and movies set in high schools, boarding schools, prep schools and college campuses. Among the movies and books I have enjoyed are Daddy Long Legs, Good - bye Mr. Chips by James Hilton, School Ties, Dead Poet Society and The New Girls by Beth Gutcheon. Ass to this fact is that I also enjoy a good suspense book set at one of these educational venues like Red Leaves by Paullina Simons and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Considering this I really looked forward to Speak Softly, She Can Heard by Pam Lewis which I recently finished. In addition I also attended a prep school in Manhattan and am approximately the same age as the main character Carole Morgan. But sitting here now and writing this review I must say that I still have very ambivalent feelings about this book and how to rate it. Originally I gave this book a B but the more I think about this book, I think it was very average book and I now plan on changing my rating to a C.

While I do think the book started off with a bang it slowly went downhill after that. And I think one of the main reasons for this was that the main character bought a lie told to her which pretty much altered her life. Played out among the height of the later 60's and early 70's when young people dropped out and ran away, the authordid capture those heady days when anything could and did happen. And as one familiar with Manhattan prep schools, Pam Lewis described the young women who grew into aimless older women beautifully. But through it all I did wonder why at some point this woman didn't speak up. Then again there wouldn't have been a book.

I was hoping that Speak Softly, She Can Hear would be as good as the supsense filled Red Leaves which kept me on the edge of my seat. But it didn't fuflfill this promise and in the end I didn't find too much redeeming about any of the characters or the situation presented.

In the end if you can really suspend disbelief, you might enjoy this book. But I'm not quite sure I buy the comparison to Donna Tartt's The Secret History or titles by Particia Highsmith which a blurb by a noted author alluded to. It might just be me but I do know that I found this character almost irritating in how she conducted her life after one disastrous evening in Stowe. And for that matter, I couldn't even buy how she wound up going there and for the reason she did either.

Despite my feelings for this book, though, I won't dsimiss the author entirely and most likely will read another book by this author, hoping it will be better than this one.

i finished this book in a week and out of all the books i read this one was the best im actually sad that im done reading it:(