Cape May

February 18, 2019
Cheek’s strong debut is a psychodrama that shows just how easily people can be manipulated. Henry, 20, and Effie, 18, are young, virginal newlyweds from rural Georgia on their honeymoon in Cape May, N.J., in 1957, arriving in the off-season of September, when it’s largely deserted. Just kids, they are naive and unprepared for their meeting with three worldly hedonists who introduce them to booze, lust, and sexual obsession. Clara is a free-spirited, wealthy socialite, Max is her bodybuilder lover, and Alma is Max’s cunning younger half sister. The trio’s bawdy, vulgar drunkenness fascinates the newlyweds, especially Henry, who is charmed by Clara and sexually seduced by Alma. Henry’s guilt is quickly rationalized as he carelessly surrenders his conscience to his sexual obsession of Alma. His need is insatiable, but her unreasonable demands force him to make promises he cannot keep. Cheek does a good job with his cast; Henry and Effie are finely drawn and their slide from innocence starkly depicted. The novel’s ending is particularly startling—a memorable final note in this cogent examination of marital infidelity and betrayal.

March 15, 2019
This young couple's September honeymoon in Cape May got so boring they almost went home early. If only.Henry and Effie got married a few months after high school graduation in their 1950s Georgia hometown and have come to while away two weeks in Effie's uncle's house, the site of fondly remembered summer visits all through her childhood. Unfortunately, Effie "had not understood what 'off-season' meant," and Henry's no help--he's never been north of Atlanta. Sadly, the "old clerk at the grocer's seemed as happy to see them as they were to see him." At least they have the delicious problem of losing their virginities, and then their inhibitions, with the help of Uncle George's well-stocked liquor cabinet. But after several days, the sad, lonely feel of the town starts to get to them. They are planning to leave a week early when they notice lights on down the street and decide to stop by. The effusive woman who answers the door turns out to be someone Effie knows, a friend of her much older cousin--actually, someone she hated. But before she can get Henry out of there, gin is being poured, dinner is being served, and a gang of people, including everyone from older men in tuxedos, beatniks, Coast Guard cadets, and a naked toddler, is boogeying it up in the living room. Higher on gin and excitement than she's ever been in her life, Effie decides running into Clara Strauss was not such a bad thing after all. The couple becomes completely infatuated with this decadent, sexy, cosmopolitan crowd, in the process falling down a rabbit hole with life-changing consequences. Deceptively relaxed and simple at first, the novel seems to be an easygoing trip down Memory Lane. It soon reveals itself as a swirling vortex of psychological suspense with insights about marriage that recall writers like Margot Livesey and Alice Munro.The 1950s setting, the pellucid prose, and the propulsive plot make this very steamy debut novel about morality and desire feel like a classic.

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Starred review from March 15, 2019
It might have been an ordinary if disappointing honeymoon for a conventional 1950s couple from Georgia, Effie and Henry: a week at Cape May on the Jersey Shore, in a house owned by a relative; unfortunately, it's September, and the shore has been shuttered for the winter, leaving the naive couple at loose ends. Until something happens. It takes decades for Henry to make sense of it: "He understands now the way desire spreads, like heat?how, when he and Effie discovered it in each other, they awoke to the swollen desirability all around them." And, yet, this is no soft-focus coming-of-age story, like the movie Summer of '42; Effie and Henry are utterly unprepared for the welter of emotions brought to the surface through their exposure to sex, gin, jazz, and, most of all, a trio of distinctly unconventional hedonists encamped in a house down the road. Mood drives the story?the empty beach town exudes a barely hidden sense of threat, of the unknown lurking everywhere. And, as Effie and Henry become closer to playboy Max; his lover, Clara; and his half sister, Alma, we feel the gathering storm in every aspect of the landscape, from the roiling ocean waves to the reverberating clink of the gin bottle. Yes, betrayals are at the core of what happens at Cape May, but, beyond that, this remarkable debut novel offers a sobering reminder of how the possibilities of life, when first encountered, often carry their own riptide.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2019

One of the first releases from Celadon, Macmillan's adventuresome new imprint, Georgia newlyweds Henry and Effie decide to honeymoon in Cape May, NJ, in late September 1957 and find the celebrated beach town mostly deserted. But they do meet socialist Clara; her rich playboy lover, Max; and Max's remote half-sister, to whom Henry is attracted, and things shift from naughty innocence (strolling naked under the stars) to betrayal. Big promotion.

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