Salt Water

June 29, 1998
Simmons, a former editor at the New York Times Book Review, made his name as a writer with a series of surreal comic novels, including Powdered Eggs and Wrinkles, but the present book, a coming-of-age novella, is a complete change of pace. Written in a spare masculine style, it is based loosely on Turgenev's classic First Love and is narrated by Michael Petrovich, who recalls the memorable summer of 1963 when he was 16 and when Mrs. Mertz and her beautiful daughter, Zina, rented a neighboring house on the East Coast offshore island of Bone Point. Michael's father is a handsome philanderer whose easygoing ways cause tension with his mother; meanwhile, Michael is trying to impress Zina while rejecting the cynical view of women offered by a worldly young friend. Matters come to a tragic head at the Labor Day party that ends this unsettling summer. Simmons's calm, detached telling of the tale, and the major role played by the strongly evoked ocean setting, make for an experience that seems more European than American, and it is interesting to note that this slight but telling book was first published, to enthusiastic reviews, in France.

August 1, 1998
Attributing his inspiration to the Turgenev tale "First Love," Simmons has written a riveting story of youthful innocence consumed by betrayal. Remarkably enthralling and agonizingly revealing, Simmons' narrative portrays 15-year-old Michael's tender emotions during a summer at the beach. At his masterful best when rendering the close relationship between the boy and his father, Simmons nevertheless maneuvers unfalteringly between each of his characters. As a course of events brought about by Zina's headstrong pursuit of pleasure progressively transforms Michael's adoration of his exotic neighbor, the tension generated by Michael's head-over-heels infatuation mounts--while the book's opening line leads like a wick into a power keg of unexpected consequences. Simply spellbinding! ((Reviewed August 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)