Ash Wednesday

Rating:
Summary: a disappointment
Review: This story does not say a lot and what it does say is not said well. The plot is derivative. The characters are hollow and unlikable. The male character's narcissistic self-reflections grate unmercifully. The female in particular is reduced to a hollow caricature. The tone strikes me as somehow false in that the story's "honesty" seems a pose. A good actor does not a good writer make. Forego this book and read the classics. F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night" and "The Beautiful and the Damned" are good places to start. Sprinkle in Hemingway's short stories. Throw in D.H. Lawrence; he wrote obsessively about male/female interactions and did so with great insight and honesty. Add Sam Shepard's plays to your list. These are the real McCoys. Sadly, it seems that Hawke's publisher wants to cash in on his celebrity status, because if this book were written by a non-famous type it would have been promptly rejected.

Rating:
Summary: Lord, deliver us from the literary ambitions of movie stars
Review: Oooooh boy. Why do I continue to do this to myself? I was convinced to read Hawke's first novel by an ex-girlfriend who thought it was the greatest thing she'd ever read. To this day I question her sanity and intelligence.

So why did I waste another 6 hours on this one? I guess I figured that in the intervening years Hawke had to have improved, if even a little. WRONG. Simply put, ASH WEDNESDAY would be merely laughable if it weren't so painfully inept. This is the sort of thing that 9th graders produce in high school creative writing courses -- overbearingly pretentious, blindly earnest and eye-rollingly self-important.

If Hawke wasn't a teen-idol movie star there is no way in hell this claptrap would ever have been taken seriously by any self-respecting editor or publisher.

Rating:
Summary: Second time a charm
Review: Forget that he's a great actor. Forget that he's married to a starlet. If you read the novel like it's... well, a novel, you're going to find a fantastic book. Original, compelling, Ash Wednesday has a clever narrative style and an excellent story. Buy it, read it, you'll love it.

Andy Bellin
Author of Poker Nation

Rating:
Summary: Excellent sophomore novel.
Review: If that acting thing doesn't work out for Ethan Hawke, then I strongly encourage him to continue writing. I found this second novel to be very good, especially the dialogue. An interesting use of the first person and thought provoking too.

Rating:
Summary: thunder-ous road trip
Review: - like Springsteen's 'Thunder Road', Ethan Hawke's 'Ash Wednesday' is desperate, last chance, hopeful, beautiful. The prose is so strong, this book practically has a heart-beat. Screw the naysayers, he IS a writer and a wonderful one at that.

Rating:
Summary: If the author's name was George McMarty
Review: Seriously. If this book was by some unknown author, he/she wouldn't even be able to get an agent. He'd be laughed at by small publishers. Look, Ethan, no one is good at Everything. Let it go. Act. Put down the pen. Or, at least, if you pick it up, keep it to yourself.

Rating:
Summary: okay yet missing something
Review: When I picked up this book, I wasn't expecting much, so I wasn't too disappointed. It is an interesting story of a couple at a crossroads. Both with their relationship and themselves. While Hawke's descriptions and narrative style are good, there seemed to be some emotional element that was lacking. One never really gets to care about the characters,and when the book ends there is no feeling of closure. The reader simply closes the book, never thinking about Christy or Jimmy again.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully told...Boy about Girl, and Girl about Boy
Review: In alternating chapters, Jimmy & Christy narrate this tale of grace, birth, the fear and joy of relationships, and what it feels like to be alive & dealing with love. It multiplies the charms of Hawke's first book, and is an extremely enjoyable read that left me extraordinarily moved as I turned the final page. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: If only...
Review: Ethan Hawke is without a doubt one of the best actors of his generation. He choses roles that pleases him, no matter how small the film. He doesn't seem to care about the twenty million dollar paycheck other actors get, as he seems content just acting in films he'll be proud of. Hawke is also a novelist. His first book, the underrated and underappreciated The Hottest State, was a very brave recollection of angst and anxieties of being in your twenties in the 1990s.

Now, Hawke goes one step further and explores relationship in the seventies in his follow up, Ash Wednesday. Jimmy, an army brat who has gone AWOL, is madly in love with Christy, even though he can't always show it properly. But Christy is now pregnant and, terrified of the consequences and of what Jimmy will do, she decides to break the relationship and run away from Jimmy, going AWOL at her turn.

Jimmy does catch up with her and they do get married, though their problems are far from over. Are they really in love, or are they only afraid of being alone? Do they really want the relationship that marriage will force them into? These are just a few questions that are at the heart of Hawke's novel.

There are many nice and touching little moments in this book, as when Jimmy as a very sad encounter with his father, of even the mariage scene itself. Many moments touch you with their warmth and realism. But then, Hawke tends to be a little too philosophical, especially in the pages following these softer moments. His characters speak as though they are always analyzing everything that surrounds them and Hawke himself often does the same thing in his writing. In the end, all those great little moments are often ruined by these overwrought moments of philosophical analyses, something that just doesn't seem needed in this book.

The novel is written from both Christy's and Jimmy's point of view, and Hawke proves that he can write skillfully and thoughtfully. This book is not a failed attempt, it is just in need of a little more editing, or a little more work. I can't wait to read Hawke's next book. If he can find his true voice, then he'll be able to write something great and powerful. Until then, we'll just have to content ourselves with Ash Wednesday.

Rating:
Summary: I'm not quite sure what this is about but I loved it.
Review: I picked this up at a major .za bookseller's January sale this year. It was the big paperback edition, retailing at a third of the regular-sized novel, so I scored 60 bucks in local currency and went for the cheap one. Ironically, I had gone in there to purchase the smaller paperback, so I didn't just pick this up and think "Oooh - Ethan Hawke. I'll take it."

The book recounts the ill-fated and wacky tale of Jimmy and Christy, newlyweds, on a trip across the country. The prose itself is written in two styles as the author recounts aspects of it, narrating in part as Jimmy and in part as Christy. Although the tale is written as it happens, each aspect is peppered with incidents - likewise, or just ones which are related or reminisced about - from Jimmy and Christy's youth, adolescence and young adulthood. Both of their characters have a fairly positive outlook on life, but both have had to deal with adversity while growing up. You get the sense that Jimmy fared worse than Christy and has had his perceptions and morals scarred by these events.

The story reminds me of a French art-house film, for want of a better description. What I mean is that there is not a plot, per se; the story is almost like a live documentary of the tale in which the viewer is treated to a look-in to the lives of Jimmy and Christy, but the tale has not yet concluded and the producers do not yet know what is going to happen at the end. It's kind of "a day in the life of" and there isn't really the sense that the story will end out going anywhere. Whether or not the story does is up to you, the reader, to decide. I got the distinct impression that the author started to write from a skeleton of a few key events and let the story evolve as he went along.

The tale is fairly dark and harrowing, particularly the recounting of Jimmy's various bleak incidents of his youth. Youi will find Jimmy loathsome at times; and Christy sometimes comes across as a bit of a hopeless case as well. As far as redemption goes, well... I don't want to give too much away.

The book itself, though, is not put-downable and I managed to tear through it whenever I could get a few minutes to read in about 4 days.

Tis is the author's 2nd novel; both were published to critical acclaim. I have long admired Mr Hawke as an actor, particulary in Gattaca which is a fine example of brilliant science-fiction, and I hope he has success with his future endeavours as an author.