Columbine

by Raymond Kennedy

She's thirteen. She's beautiful. She's the girl next door.

431 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Sillyhuron · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She’s thirteen. She’s beautiful. She’s the girl next door”.

Feel pervy yet?

Despite the lurid tagline, this is a great, capital R, Romantic book. It traces the relationship between Henry Starbuck Flynn, WASP-y nerd in 1940’s small town New England, and his 13 year old, immigrant, just-about-to-bud neighbor, Columbine Kokoriss. What it’s really about is how people learn to grow up, and how maturity can be a terrible thing when it destroys your innocence. Henry’s already been to war before he even became a man, and has to face the consequences of finding his own identity. Columbine’s just barely beginning to discover what it is to be a woman. Their relationship (never explicitly sexual – but the subtext just hangs there) starts out pure. But the way people react to it causes them both to suffer. The author’s compassion, in fact love, for the characters shows through beautifully. In a normal romantic novel, Henry’s love for her would salve his wounded soul, etc. etc. Here things don’t get better that easy. And poor Columbine’s discovery of her sexuality threatens to destroy her. Kennedy nails the 13 year old personality – immature, thoughtful, sparkling, bitchy. A little girl trapped in a woman’s body. A great character and a great book.

[Zeke Knott · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a nightmare lol. Kill every male character in this book

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lolita this is not. And, to its eventual credit, the book knows it is not, although the fact that it may take the reader several hundred pages to realize the same is a quite severe detraction, even if I am unsure whether it’s fair or not to lay this demerit at his feet. It is, however, simply a story, and one that doesn’t therefore feel the need to greatly psychologize either the pursuer or the prepubescent prey. This is not to say that the ramifications are not considered, as this IS a story, and Kennedy is adept at extrapolating outwards some of the possible repercussions of the central tension, and, as such, to leave it to the audience to make their own conclusions about the deeper things. Story: man in his young 20s, drifting, passive, and largely blind to himself, dates in succession four neighbor girls each one increasingly younger than himself, culminating in his illicit interest in the youngest, 13-year-old columbine, who is herself the smartest, most assured, and forthright of the group. A series of misunderstandings and juvenile miscalculations on Columbine‘s part unravel both their budding relationship and her own life. A worthwhile question: how much is she actually depicted as a 13-year-old? There are spots in which she is anything but, and then he’ll revert for an instant into her childishness, rather than have it leavened throughout her profile and actions more organically. His prose is studiously workmanlike and forward moving, which might work better in a story that doesn’t require inherently the type of psychological acuity necessary to understand the actions of its main characters. In that sense, it really would benefit from being 38% smarter … Has been only one short scene in which the point of you switched from Henry to someone else. That was the best scene. Was when we saw all four girls discussing Henry, and got a break from his constricting, exhausting perspective, and got to actually see Kennedy think through the characters he had created. In other words, does he understand who these people are? Can he articulate their motivations? Can he critique them? That short section was refreshing ballast for the 50 pages bookending it. End of the book is not better served by having only few of these. Is not restraint; it is restriction.

[Scott Bowlby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this a couple decades ago and would love to find another copy. It's a great earlier 20th century story of life, love, and growing up.