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A Novel
by Gabriel Tallent
Book Reviewed by:In this story of intense friendship and grit, two down-and-out teens escape their lives and chase a different future through rock-climbing -- from the New York Times bestselling author of My Absolute Darling.
Dan and Tamma are two teenagers in their last year of high school in the southern Mojave Desert. One is a gifted golden child, the other a mouthy burnout. Climbing boulders in trash-strewn parking lots during cold desert nights, they seal their unique bond and dream of a life of adventure.
As the year progresses and adult reality looms, they are rocked by change and pulled apart by irreconcilable obligations. Differences of class, talent, and prospects take on new importance; options dwindle, and their decisions grow ever more consequential and perilous. It feels inevitable, finally, that something must give.
With a magnificent gift for nature writing and a joyful appreciation for the redemptive power of friendship, Gabriel Tallent gives readers a rollicking, adrenaline-filled, and soul-searching novel about risking everything to change your life.
Four
They went to school; they did school‑kid things, opened their lockers, put books away, took notes; Tamma sketched climbs in her lab notebook; Dan did homework; Tamma downloaded videos of Alex Johnson; Dan stooped over his textbook; they sat in brightly colored, molded‑plastic chairs; they walked vinyl‑tiled hallways, full of the feeling that life was somewhere, elsewhere; and on Monday, the fourteenth of November, Tamma was crimping up the overhang of Fingerbang Princess, her breath falling in evanescent plumes, sinking down into the last good hold, skittering her feet about on matchbook edges until she found the high, left, dice‑sized nub, and then she leapt. Going up on pointe like a dancer and then leaving her stage behind, out into the dark.
She caught Tinkerbell's Bandersnatch and her feet caromed left in an enormous swing, her shoulder packed, her hair fanning, and sneering with effort, she held it. For the first time ever. She was so surprised that she...
Tallent's novel returns again and again to the trappings of capitalism and the gnawing anxiety of economic insecurity, to the question of whether it's even possible for Tamma and Dan to find anything resembling emotional safety and security without giving in to the pressures to conform, to find themselves, as Dan characterizes it, in "purposeless lives they don't understand, lives they don't enjoy, forced from one thing to the next … working jobs they hate for a life in which they find no meaning." What sustains them through all of this uncertainty, of course, is the strength of their friendship, a platonic relationship (Dan is straight and Tamma takes great delight in proclaiming her lesbian crushes in often hilariously profane terms) that might center on their shared love of climbing but has, over the course of many years, grown far more profound than that...continued
Full Review
(808 words)
(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
#1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert
I can't remember the last time I cared about fictional characters as desperately as I came to care about the beautiful, hilarious and courageous teenage protagonists of Crux. This book is like nothing else — it's an unconventional love story; a merciless portrait of Americans who live (literally) on the edge; and an adrenalized, heart-stopping, action-adventure ride of the highest stakes. At the center of it all beats a pure and sincere heart. I absolutely loved this book and will never forget it. New York Times bestselling author Stephen King
Crux is one of the best novels I've ever read about friendship between a young man and a young woman. It's also exciting and tension-filled. Sharply written and full of controlled emotion. Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark
A breathtaking, thrilling and unforgettable story of friendship, of hopes and dreams against a reality so harsh it broke my heart. I won't forget Tamma and Dan. I adored Crux, it is everything you could want in a book. Gabrielle Zevin, New York Times bestselling author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
I wasn't seeking a novel about the intense platonic friendship between two young rock climbers, but here Crux is, and she's a beauty. Everything, it turns out, is rock climbing. Crux is tender, immersive, and thrilling, with memorable characters—not just the main ones either—who feel unruly and fully alive. Gabriel Tallent depicts the natural world and the existential difficulties of being a human within it, with depth and grace."In Gabriel Tallent's Crux, one of the novel's primary characters, Tamma, declares exuberantly, "Get up, get up! It's Saturday and the rocks are a-warming! … Arise and go now, to a park I know, that sits upon the joining of three deserts, each more blighted and lonely than the last! Arise and go!"
Avid rock climbers like Tamma and her best friend Dan would immediately recognize this injunction as a call to Joshua Tree National Park, located where the Mojave desert and the Colorado desert, part of the larger Sonoran desert, come together. The park's topography is characterized not only by these deserts and the park's namesake foliage but also by its many quartz monzonite rock formations. These, of course, are why the park has, over ...
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