The Hottest State
By (Author) Ethan Hawke
HarperCollins Publishers
Flamingo
1st October 1997
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
813.54
Paperback
208
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 16mm
151g
A beautifully crafted debut from one of the brightest young stars of American cinema.
Theres 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
'A sharp, moving tale' Company 'A lust story that crackles and burns like a firework . . . a likeable book, nicely filled with meditations on absent fathers, doubts about masculinity and a cast of feckless characters who have more hang-ups than a cloakroom.' Esquire 'The ideal gift for that ever-so-slightly-self-absorbed young person of your dreams.' GQ 'An impressive debut' Daily Telegraph
Ethan Hawkes films include Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites and Before Sunrise.