The Book of Hard Things

by Sue Halpern

A provocative first novel that explores the porous borders between friendship, sex and love

At eighteen, Cuzzy Gage has never been out of Poverty, the isolated mountain hamlet where he was born, raised, and--much to the annoyance of his dreamy girlfriend, the mother of his child--seems destined to stay. He is content to hang out and just get by; it's as if ambition hasn't occurred to him. Enter Tracy Edwards, who has come to the area after the death of his close friend, Algernon Black, an ethnomusicologist who specialized in initiation rituals. It's to Black's family estate, the Larches, that Tracy retreats, in grief and confusion, after his friend's death, to archive Algie's work. Through a set of circumstances that look like chance but turn out to be something else entirely, Tracy hires Cuzzy to help sort through Algie's papers. So begins a quiet and ambivalent relationship, one that eventually causes both young men to admit their own histories and to start to rethink the future. As Tracy introduces Cuzzy to poetry and literature and music, he in turn is exposed to the natural world, to a place of granite and schist and other, enduring, hard things. But in a small town their unlikely friendship is inevitably the focus of scrutiny and debate, a debate that ends as no one could have imagined, and makes each of them, in their own way, confront the hardest thing of all.

Poetic and compelling, The Book of Hard Things is a bold fiction debut.
Sue Halpern writes frequently for The New York Review of Books and is the author of two previous nonfiction Migrations to Solitude and Four Wings and a Prayer . The Book of Hard Things is her first novel. She lives in between Vermont and upstate New York with her husband, Bill McKibben, and their daughter.
At eighteen, Cuzzy Gage has never left the remote mountain town where he was born and raised, and where—much to the annoyance of his dreamy girlfriend, Crystal, the mother of his child—he seems determined to stay. Content to hang out with his friends and just get by, it's as if ambition has never occurred to him.

Michael "Tracy" Edwards is drifting, too. An English teacher from New York City, he has quit his job after the death of his best friend, Algernon Black, an ethnomusicologist who specialized in initiation ceremonies. Taking up residence at Black's family's rustic estate to sort through his friend's papers and write a narrative of his life, Tracy is very much alone. The deep woods, with its stark and powerful beauty, only serves to reinforce his loneliness. When he happens to meet Cuzzy Gage at the local convenience store, he is struck by the boy's knowledge of the outdoors and his comfort among the trees. He could use some of that comfort. He offers Cuzzy a job.

So begins a quiet and ambivalent friendship, one that eventually causes both young men to admit their own histories, and to begin rethinking the future. As Tracy introduces Cuzzy to poetry, literature, and music, he in turn is exposed to the natural world, a place of granite and schist and other enduring hard things. But in a small town their relationship is inevitably the focus of scrutiny and debate—a debate that ends as no one could have imagined.

Poetic and provocative, The Book of Hard Things explores the porous border between friendship and love, and marks a bold fiction debut.
"[Halpern's] work here is made especially memorable by the exactness of her tone in evoking small-town tensions, the often misdirected energies of youth and most especially the process of growing up and acquiring an adult sense of responsibility."— James Polk, The New York Times

"Sue Halpern has written wonderful books of nonfiction, but sometimes nonfiction to fiction isn't a transition that can be made gracefully. Not only is the writing in her first novel unself-conscious—which is what grace amounts to when applied to literature, I think—but the words seem organic to the page. The Book of Hard Things is powerful and sad, and sometimes very funny, and it is the debut of a brilliant new writer of fiction."— Robb Forman Dew

"Sue Halpern has an eye that is penetrating without harshness and an ear perfectly attuned to the defenses of the wounded. She finds beneath the most adamant surfaces the hurt places that can heal, and her riveting novel challenges and moves us to see, beyond the particulars of class and worldliness, how loss can yield to caring."— Rosellen Brown

"Polished and passionate."— Publishers Weekly

Genres: Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 8, 2003

About the author

Sue Halpern lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont where she writes books and articles, consorts with her husband, the writer and activist Bill McKibben, looks forward to visits from their wonderful daughter Sophie, plays with their remarkably enthusiastic dog, and introduces Middlebury College students to digital audio storytelling. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and Rhodes Scholar with a doctorate from Oxford, the author of a book that was made an Emmy-nominated film as well as six others that weren’t, one-half of a therapy dog team, a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, and a major supporter of the ice cream industry.

(from her website)

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should have known from the title that this was going to be a book about hard topics. But that isn't what prompted me to give this book only three stars. I didn't particularly like any of the characters, plus the book was long on description but short on dialogue. You never really get to know any of the characters. Cuzzy, the main character, is just a lump going along for the ride. Tracy, a visitor to the small town nicknamed Poverty, is a professor who seems more like a character out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. They forge an unlikely friendship, which, inevitably, leads to tragedy.

[Sb · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was good but it didn't have much pull in it to keep you reading it, up until the end anyway. The book is pretty depressing all the way through. I'm not saying that a book needs to be happy to be good, it's just harder to read one that's depressing. You finish the book feeling sad and almost empty. The book was ok and I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend the book.

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn’t keep my interest enough for me to want to finish it. It was pretty slow through a lot of it. Also, I didn’t like her characters.

[Brian Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely give a five. I liked how there is a short cast and each one plays an important part. That the plot moves slowly, haltingly, but inevitably forward. The well turned phrases and descriptions.

But this is a bigger book than simply its plot. It retells the story of the Samaritan, of people trying to help strangers, the consequences for both, what is "helping", what can that look like to others, and what can ultimately result.

[Elizabeth Van Buskirk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was enjoying this until the needlessly violent /graphic scene at the end. Not sure if this was necessary for the reader to buy into a redepemtive ending for the protagonist. The salient points of the novel were coming through just fine.

[Jenny Wiley]

Another great book Once Im done with this series going to start it over again

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times this book was difficult to read.

[Charlotte · Rating 2 out of 5]

not a writing style i connect with. very difficult to determine when a character was remembering or in the present. would zone out while reading frequently.

[Elizabeth Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel has been sitting on my shelf for several years, one of a quartet of books my daughter read in a January term class at Middlebury College, where Halpern teaches. The setting is a small town in the Adirondacks, where the townies struggle to make a living in the post-logging era while just up the road a new generation of robber barons are erecting enormous lodges in the exclusive woods first settled by the likes of J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt. The main character is Cuzzy Gage, an 18-year-old on a fast track to loserdom whose preacher father was carted off to the insane asylum when he was nine and whose mother died of an aneurysm a few years later. When the story starts, Cuzzy's homeless and unemployed, living in the woods with the help of a high-school honey and estranged from the mother of his infant son, a girl who pores over women's magazines and is ambitious to get out one day. The plot kicks in with the arrival in town of Tracy Edwards, a Manhattan English teacher who dropped out after the death of his best friend, a gay ethnomusicologist who seems to have died of AIDs, and is living in the dead friend's ancestral lodge while cataloguing his papers and writing a narrative of his life. Tracy hires Cuzzy to help him with the papers and in locating the dead man's tree house somewhere in the dense forested acreage of the estate. Ever so slowly, Cuzzy begins to blossom as the numbness of his tragic circumstances begins to wear off and his innate curiosity revives, with tiny tendrils of feeling unfolding and a slender stalk of intelligence growing toward the light. But the changes in Cuzzy inspire fear and rage in some of those he's leaving behind, which culminates in a hideous crime.

Although it has some problems, I quite liked this novel. Halpern succeeded in making me care about Cuzzy, and because his story is complete, the novel worked for me. However, Halpern leaves a bunch of loose threads, which many readers will find annoying. Why build up a viewpoint character and then simply drop her? Why introduce a plot device such as the tree house and fail to resolve it? Why create an unlikely friendship and leave it undeveloped? Why present a parable like the Good Samaritan and fail to follow through? This is a first novel, so such lapses aren't unexpected. But tying up those loose threads can be the difference between a good novel and a great novel, and an important lesson that every novelist must learn is the necessity of leaving out the great stuff that ends up going nowhere.

[Antonia Zanotto · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is a pretty straightforward give away as to what you can expect. Beautifully detailed, this novel offered me some fresh insight into things I would have otherwise never considered. It seems well researched and thoughtfully put together, like every page has meaning to the story as a whole. The ending is almost unbearable for it finishes off an already difficult story. But the characters feel real and alive throughout, something which keeps you reading on sympathetically without rest. I would be curious to watch the movie if one is ever made.

[Connie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I liked this novel. It explores the friendship between Cuzz, a directionles, drifting teenager from Poverty, and an equally lost teacher who has come to the woods to memorialize his dearest friend.

The characters are pathetic, in the true sense of the word, and the book's ending is, itself, a "hard thing." This is not light reading or uplifting, but I think it is, in the end, worthwhile.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had potential to be a really good story- but I felt it jumped around a little too much and never gave substantial information about any one character. I wasn't attached to anyone and at a very crucial moment in the book when I should have been sobbing I just thought "oh, because I didn't see that coming." It wasn't a bad read but it wasn't that fantastic either.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was a little strange. It's about a man (Tracy) whose best friend (Algie) dies. Algie was gay, but Tracy is not. Tracy comes to Algie's home to go through his papers. Tracy befriends Cuzzy, a poor teenager whose father is in an asylum and mother is dead. I'm sure there is a very deep meaning to this book. It just made me sad.

[Theo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worlds collide in upstate New York when a young man's life of nothingness is challenged by a newcomer to the town who opens his mind and home to the young man. But what happens in this small minded small town pre-Laramie is an eerie read.

[Debs · Rating 3 out of 5]

The relationship between a young burnout and forty-something music enthusiast is taken the wrong way by a sleepy little town. I didn’t spend as much time as I should have trying to connect the chapter headings with the story itself.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprising, in different ways I won't detail so as not to give it away. Well done, though it includes some dark and graphic content. Glad I read it, though some others may not have the stomach for it.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love the title but so far it is very disappionting.

[Brianna]

This book was brutally depressing.

I liked the writing style well enough, but it didn't feel like a complete novel somehow.

Also, did I mention brutal?

[Susan]

Burnham Library (Colchester) book sale 6/26/10

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book would be better. the main character is impulsive and it is hard to see why people like him and want to help hi out so much.

[Julie McDonald · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could empathize with many of the characters and enjoyed the lush description. But that's all I really got from this.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the character development and the simplicity of the story telling but thought it a cheap ending.

[Allie Krumm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't even know how I feel about what I just read. Great writing, but overall unsettling and depressing.