Chinese Handcuffs ANNOTATION
Still troubled by his older brother's violent suicide, eighteen-year-old Dillon becomes deeply involved in the terrible secret of his friend Jennifer, who feels she can tell no one what her stepfather is doing to her.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
When Dillon Hemingway is forced to witness his brother Preston's suicide, his life understandably seems to fall apart. His quest to make it whole again involves Stacy Ryder, Preston's girlfriend, who is left with more than a memeory of Dillon's dead brother, and Jennifer Lawless, a star high school basketball player with a secret too monstrous to tell and too enormous to keep.His antagonist are a vicious cycling gang, a single-minded school principal, and Jennifer's father, a brilliant lawyer with a chilling disregard for human sensitivity. Chris Crutcher's Chinese Handcuffs is a story about a time when life seems too overwhelming to confront. It is also a story of courage and acceptance, told with power and sensibility.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Dillon, 16, is a winning triathlete trying to live with the fact of his older brother Preston's suicide, which he witnessed. Preston left behind a girlfriend (and a baby) whom Dillon has always loved; he is also increasingly interested in Jennifer, the top girls' basketball player, a lifelong victim of sexual abuse by her father and later her stepfather. Carved out in straight narratives, flashbacks and letters to Preston recapping events, Crutcher, author of the well-received The Crazy Horse Electric Game , Running Loose and Stotan! , has written a weighty, introspective novel. Because of the book's complex structure, and because the issues are so gritty and realistic, parts of the resolution become melodramatic in contrast. Each characters' actions are undermined by the author's habit of introducing traits or quirks right before exploiting them for dramatic effect. Furthermore, pregnancy twice sets off suicide attempts. Nevertheless, the book is riveting despite those clumsy moments; like the triathlete who takes second or third place, the challenges and the dazzling effort displayed during the event more than compensate for a less-than-perfect finish. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)
Children's Literature - Courtney Angermeier
Dillon's brother Preston is dead. The ripples of his suicide still touch every aspect of Dillon's life. Dillon's writing, triathlon training, battles with the school administration, and confused relationship with his dead brother's girlfriend have all become tools with which he struggles to process his grief and guilt. Jennifer, a brilliant high school basketball star, struggles with issues of sexual abuse while trying to maintain a facade of normality. To survive, she cuts herself off from connecting with others. Dillon and Jennifer come together and through the revelation of their deepest wounds, begin the heal each other. Chris Crutcher paints a gripping and complex portrait of two young people that is impossible to put down. The story is written in alternating points of view. The subject matter, though intense and troubling, will speak on many levels to adolescent readers. 2004 (orig.1989), Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins, and Ages 13 to 18.
School Library Journal
Gr 9-12-- There are enough plots here to fuel a soap opera for a year. Dillon Hemingway is a brilliant student and athlete whose older brother, Preston, gets involved with a motorcycle gang, loses his legs in a bike accident, and later blows his head away in full view of his younger brother. Dillon writes long letters to his dead brother to tell him about Stacy, who was Preston's girl and the mother of their child but who may secretly love Dillon, and Jennifer, star basketball player, whose father sexually abused her and whose stepfather, a madman, also abuses her. Dillon's mother walked out on his family some years before. So much for the beginning. Beyond the first chapters there are scenes in which Dillon sprinkles his brother's ashes into the gas tanks of the cyclists who corrupted Preston and in which Stacy uses the school public address system to announce that she is indeed the mother of Preston's child. Dogs are crushed by cars, the Vietnam War is rehashed. Characters keep asking ``can we talk'' and then prattle on with enormous presence and wisdom about the evils of society, their parents, all adults, their own sorry lot in life, and love (``There are so many crazy things, dangerous things sometimes, that we're taught to call love''). Jesus Christ is at one point called ``a heroic dude.'' Dillon is too much in control of himself and the other characters to be believable. The ending, in which Dillon single-handedly drives Jennifer's crazed step-father out of town, is contrived. There's a place in fiction for teenage problems, but surely not all in one novel. --Robert E. Unsworth, Scarsdale Junior High School, N.Y.
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