A first novel by the young actor featured in the Dead Poet's
Society has a lot in common with the world of his film Reality
Bites: It's a young man's idea of hip romance, with plenty of
gestures to satisfy teeny-bopper fans. Hawke's mercifully brief
story is really an extended hissy fit over being dumped by the type
of girl his narrator doesn't usually date - she's a bit plump,
rather graceless, not beautiful by conventional standards. She is,
of course, smart, which is important to 21-year-old William
Harding, a working actor in New York City who admits he's got by on
his good looks and charm. Certainly not his intellect - he's
impressed by his ability to recite a long poem by Gregory Corso by
heart in response to Sarah's reading to him from Adrienne Rich. His
own mother warns him about the limits of life as "a handsome
bullshitter," but William blunders along, full of his own
importance as he lovingly records his every little foible and
endearing personality trait, which seem to include smashing
furniture when he's frustrated. Sarah, meanwhile, withholds sex,
and hands him a tract on "Rape and the Twentieth-Century Woman."
Pouting William must use a condom when the big moment finally
comes. A Parisian interlude, where he alludes with false modesty to
his career, contributes to their breakup - she realizes that she
needs space, and William is sent packing, back to his beautiful,
empty-headed girlfriend from the pant - but not before reciting
Shakespeare to Sarah from the street outside her apartment. This
clumsily written novel takes itself very seriously, although it is
mostly content to name but not to show: We have to take Hawke's
vague descriptions of "brilliant" friends, "great" books, "stupid"
hair on faith, and then there's that "French" moustache on a waiter
in . . . France. Skip the movie, if there is one. (Kirkus Reviews)
A beautifully crafted debut from one of the brightest young stars
of American cinema. There's nothing more exhilarating than falling
in love for the first time. And nothing more confusing... 'William
is 20; sexy, confident and easy. Then he meets Sarah and falls in
love, and his confidence and ease, upon which his sexiness rests,
are called into question. Sarah is troubled, obviously so, but
William is so besotted he fails to notice or to care... Obsessive
first love is an enduring - and difficult - subject for first-time
novelists, but Hawke has managed to encapsulate well the
characteristics of a love affair doomed by one-sidedness and the
psychological breakdown which follows it... His writing is
searingly open; his prose, full of freshness of love and the agony
of loss, is beguiling. The Hottest State captures beautifully the
awfulness of being captured.' Mary Loudon, The Times
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