Too Cool - Softcover

Brenna, Duff

3.29

66 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452281164 ISBN 13: 9780452281165

Publisher: Plume, 1999

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"An unfaltering, unflinching, piercing look into a tormented, youthful heart."--The New York Times

In the dead of winter, in the midst of a blizzard, Elbert Earl Evans--known as Triple E--has escaped from a Colorado reform school in a stolen Oldsmobile with his girlfriend, Jeanne, his cousin, and a friend. After outrunning the police, Triple E and Jeanne find themselves alone and stranded in a stalled car. Eventually, to have any hope of survival, Triple E sets out on a desperate search for help.

As he struggles through the brutal cold, Triple E reflects on his past and discovers the humanity that lies beneath his violent nature: his love for Jeanne, the pain of his father's admission that "you're not the son I wanted," and his sense of alienation from family and friends. Readers will be riveted by Triple E's battle to save Jeanne's life, and his own, as well as his internal struggle to conquer his violent impulses. Written with unsparing and evocative prose, Too Cool is an edgy, coming-of-age story with all the earmarks of a modern classic.

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Review:

Elbert--a.k.a. Triple E--Earl Evans, brings new meaning to the term "Problem Child." According to his teacher and unstoppably positive moral supporter, Miss Bridgewater, Triple E has "more poetry in his soul than he knows." That may be the case, but it's a long, frightening journey to wherever that poetry lies buried. On its surface, Too Cool follows our young hellion protagonist as he busts out of reform school and into the raging heart of a Colorado blizzard, where he finds himself fighting for his own survival and that of his faithful sweetheart Jeanne. Beneath that, however, Duff Brenna's third fictive endeavor is the tale of Triple E's lifelong trek across another frozen landscape--a seemingly hopeless past, present, and future populated by a drunkard father, shady friends, a little bad luck, a lot of bad choices, and a hopelessly twisted psyche, equal parts fury and seriously misplaced sexual longing.

Brenna isn't as engagingly psychosexual as Dennis Cooper or as humorous or hip as Denis Johnson. He does, however, demonstrate a special kind of bravery in creating his lead character. When Triple E isn't engaging in bad-ass posturing or self-hatred, he's beating the snot out of drunks, for a few dollars or just for the heck of it. He's not an easy guy to like. Given this, the wonder is that the prose moves along at a fairly steady clip, though the reader can occasionally feel as bludgeoned as one of Triple E's boxing opponents. --Bob Michaels

From the Publisher:

"An unfaltering, unflinching, piercing look into a tormented youthful heart...brilliantly evoked...."--Richard Bernstein, New York Times

"Pacing his narrative with the suspense of a thriller, Brenna writes grippingly and with uncanny insight into the mind and heart...." Publishers Weekly, starred

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