Velocity

September 1, 1988
Her compelling, erotic first novel marks McCloy as an accomplished writer who is not afraid to handle a difficult subject. In a spare yet lyrical prose style that reflects the intensity of the narrator's emotions, it tells of a few weeks in the life of 25-year-old Ellie Lowell, who has come home to North Carolina after her mother's sudden death. Alone with her father, a loving but taciturn policeman, Ellie is unable to deal with her grief and sense of overwhelming loss. Though she is an aspiring film director in Manhattan, Ellie takes a daytime job as a waitress in a seedy local restaurant. At night, in the grip of an uncontrollable need she makes no effort to deny, Ellie sneaks out of the house to a shack down the road where she seduces Jesse, a tattooed, menacing, half-Cherokee drug dealer and member of Hell's Angels, whose Harley motorcyle symbolizes Ellie's need to speed past her sorrow into the mindless fulfillment of sex. Images of velocity abound in the slim text: Ellie's mother died in a car accident, ``the rush and shock and smash of the rest of her life accelerating to meet her head-on through the windshield.'' As the weather grows hotter day by day, so does Ellie's carnal heat and unappeasable lust. In sustaining a highly concentrated focus, McCloy makes Ellie's feverish behavior inevitable and credible. She is equally successful in depicting the hermetic atmosphere of a small Southern town and the people who live there. Movie rights to Chartoff Productions; Literary Guild featured alternate; major ad/promo.