CLICK

by Rebecca Cook

It’s been three years since the death of her husband and twin sons, and everyone believes that Ronnie is getting better, that she’s taking her medicine, and that she’s listening, but she struggles to disentangle herself from the past, to know when her memories end and reality begins. When she meets George, Ronnie hopes he can somehow save her, that she can learn to save herself, but there’s a bird in her head and claws in her chest; the past is pulling her under and she may never resurface.

Kindle Edition

First published August 4, 2014

About the author

Rebecca Cook writes poetry, short fiction, essays, experimental essays and lyrics, and novels.

Her first published novel is CLICK and can be purchased at Amazon.com She has published two books of poems, I will Not Give Over (available on Amazon and at Kelsay Books) and The Terrible Baby (available at Dancing Girl Press).

Rebecca was a 2009 Bread Loaf Scholar and her lyric essay, ”Flame,” published by Southeast Review(2012), was chosen as a notable essay for the 2013 Best American Essays.

She has published poems, essays, and stories in The Georgia Review, Antioch Review, New England Review, Southeast Review, Sliver of Stone, Atticus Review, Wicked Alice, The Rumpus, Pank, The Nervous Breakdown, and many others.

Reviews

[Mkturner · Rating 5 out of 5]

If "Click" by Rebecca Cook were not so remarkably well written I do not believe anyone would be able to summon up the courage to finish this book. As it is, you probably won't put it down until you read the last lines and just sit there, thinking. We learn almost immediately that this is a story of a young woman who turns—just for a moment, one moment—to look at her arguing children in the back seat of her car and drives straight into a Mack truck, killing children and husband, mangling her own body and soul almost beyond recovery.

"We are getting into the car, the boys fighting over a toy truck neither of them really wants. We snap them into their car seats. I can feel the red ribs of the steering wheel, slick in my hands; I am turning left on Northbrook, right on Willow. I am driving straight into forever."

When the book opens, three years have gone by "on a held breath." Ronnie has been hospitalized for months with catatonia—unable to speak, move—"and then, one day, after a moment, after just a split second really, she 'came to.' She opened herself, stretched out her hands, and poured herself a pink cup of water, the very best drink of water she'd ever had, she who was so thirsty from flying straight through the night and into the morning of herself…" Twenty-eight years old, back to college, beginning a new life, buoyed by—or drowning in—hallucinations.

Ronnie's life is told in the first person as it moves between present and past tense with no respect for linear time. As a result, everything is happening now, or again, or in the future. How is she able to hang on to at least a shred of sanity? She is fixated on even numbers. (Ronnie is, not incidentally, a twin.) Everything is done in pairs. Inhale. Exhale. Count your steps. Avoid cracks. She finds some release in sex, actually lots of sex. But the hallucinations are never really out of sight. Inhale. Exhale. Count the ice cubes in the water glass: 2,4,6… Everything in pairs.

"Click" does not have an awkward sentence, phrase, word. It reads with the grace that only a very skilled writer can summon. Not surprisingly, Rebecca Cook is a well-regarded poet. After this impressive debut, we should all have the highest regard for her as a novelist. By all means, read this book.

[Rebecca Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebecca Cook’s debut novel Click echoes her fantastical whirring manic poems. This is a story of haints a woman unraveling redolent with sweet cream and strawberry pop with lard-laden biscuits and the sun slicing across water. Cook doesn't shy away from tackling mental illness sex and grief and these three subjects become characters in the novel as alert and watchful as the black eye of the blackest crow. Click resonates with the voices you hear on a lake at night just when you think you could float forever. Click is a story of lives lived in reverse and how we as humans take care of what can and what cannot be cared for. --Rebecca Loudon, Radish King and over fabulous books that whirl round your head

“Click is the kind of book that puts its arms around you and invites you into the family and makes you feel like you belong within its pages, sometimes uncomfortably and sometimes with soaring joy. Rebecca Cook’s language sings and by turns instructs, and her patient, dead-correct storytelling will linger in your mind for years after you read Click. What a fine piece of writing!” –Mike Magnuson, author of The Right Man for the Job, Lummox, and Heft on Wheels.

“You have never read a book like Click. It will pull you under and turn you loose, only when it’s done with you. Rebecca Cook writes with a dazzling urgency that is both real and unreal. And you believe every word. You're grateful for her wild imagination and her lyrical language. Click will stay with me for a very, very long time, and I'm glad." –Jenny Sadre-Orafai, author of Weed Over Flower, Dressing the Throat Plate, What Her Hair Says About Her, and Paper, Cotton, Leather.

"Rebecca Cook’s intense new novel, Click, manages at once to be sexy and haunting, an admirable mix. Beautifully paced and full of deep interiority, the work circles in on itself and becomes a meditation on regret and mental illness, how we process the often random nature of the moments that shape our lives, and ultimately, how we heal or do not. Click will burn a hole right through you.” –Joseph Gross, Editor-in-Chief, Atticus Books.

[Star]

CLICK is a stream-of-consciousness type story of one woman’s grief and descent into madness. CLICK both is resonant and discordant at the same time, haunting the reader with the images and sounds. There aren’t really breaks in the story and it leaves you with the urge to finish it in one sitting. CLICK isn’t for the faint of heart because of the ease into which you can get pulled into Ronnie’s brilliant and disturbing madness. The writing is graceful and deceptively simple, but will wind its way into your mind and soul.