#BookReview: "Click"

Fiction Title: CLICK Author: Rebecca Cook Rating: Must Read! Publisher: New Rivers Press Web Page: http://www.newriverspress.com/ Reviewed by: M.K.Turner

If "Click" by Rebecca Cook were not so remarkably well written I do not believe anyone would be able to summon up the courage to finish this book. As it is, you probably won't put it down until you read the last lines and just sit there, thinking. It is the story of a young woman who turns—just for a moment, one moment—to look at her arguing children in the back seat of her car and drives straight into a Mack truck, killing children and husband, mangling her own body and soul almost beyond recovery. "We are getting into the car, the boys fighting over a toy truck neither of them really wants. We snap them into their car seats. I can feel the red ribs of the steering wheel, slick in my hands; I am turning left on Northbrook, right on Willow. I am driving straight into forever." When the book opens, three years have gone by "on a held breath." Ronnie has been hospitalized for months with catatonia—unable to speak, move—"and then, one day, after a moment, after just a split second really, she 'came to.' She opened herself, stretched out her hands, and poured herself a pink cup of water, the very best drink of water she'd ever had, she who was so thirsty from flying straight through the night and into the morning of herself…" Twenty-eight years old, back to college, beginning a new life, buoyed by—or drowning in—hallucinations. Ronnie's life is told in the first person as it moves between present and past tense with no respect for linear time. As a result, everything is happening now, or again, or in the future. How is she able to hang on to at least a shred of sanity? She is fixated on even numbers. (Ronnie is, not incidentally, a twin.) Everything is done in pairs. Inhale. Exhale. Count your steps. Avoid cracks. She finds some release in sex, actually lots of sex. But the hallucinations are never really out of sight. Inhale. Exhale. Count the ice cubes in the water glass: 2,4,6… Everything in pairs. "Click" does not have an awkward sentence, phrase, word. It reads with the grace that only a very skilled writer can summon. Not surprisingly, Rebecca Cook is a well-regarded poet. Can be bought from Amazon. source:Bookreview.com