Jerry Engels: A Novel

by Thomas Rogers

Visit Thomas Rogers's author website at otherpress.com/thomasrogers.

In this sequel to At the Shores , Jerry Engels is now a junior at Penn State College, living in a second-rate fraternity, failing the courses in his major, Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, and thinking about women, sex, and love. Since losing the rich, beautiful, and kind Rosalind Ingleside in his last year of high school, he has had four girlfriends and slept with dozens of other women, including wild, hard-bitten, and married women he has encountered in the small towns of central Pennsylvania.

When the novel opens, he has just lost Pat Gaheris, a gorgeous sorority girl, whom he infected with crabs. Soon he begins to pass the time with Anne, an unattractive and inexperienced art student, who suspects she is a lesbian. Enter Elizabeth, Jerry's Freshman Composition teacher. After a chance meeting one weekend at a ski resort, they seem likely to go their separate ways. But, in the novel's decisive scenes, Jerry refuses to let her drop him, while the well-educated, ambitious, and divorced Elizabeth discovers, to the reader's surprise as well as her own, that she is drawn to her handsome and attentive student. In the end, Jerry chooses to embrace a life given purpose and shape by desire.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2002

Reviews

[Robin Malcomson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an odd book....I find it interesting that only one other person has reviewed it for Goodreads. Most books have thousands of reviews and this one has one. What does that mean. I almost didn't bother myself, because I was having such a hard time figuring out what to say. It is well written, somewhat thought provoking, and kind of blah. It is set in 1951 and is about a young man who is figuring out his life.....he seems to be ahead of most people in his self awareness, but he is very egocentric. He has many relationships with a variety of people, and each of those people see him as a wonderful unique person....but he has the ability to make everyone feel as if they are the only one. He wouldn't see it as cheating.....I think he thinks he is just a genuine person. I really am perplexed by this book....I didn't really get what the author was going for. It could have been good, but I think it misses some mark....that I am not even sure about. I almost want someone else to read it so I can get their take on it.

[Laurie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just read that this is a sequel...did not realize that when I read it. I don't remember much about this book...

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great oddball book about a confused college student having lots and lots of affairs. Quite funny. Puts the lie to the myth of the unsexed 1950s.