Chip Cheek

Capturing the essence of youthful unrest and dissatisfaction while maintaining a literary tone are not easy things to master in fiction, F. Scott Fitzgerald did it several times, capturing the highs and lows while Richard Yates paints a sorrowful portrait of suburban boredom. But Chip Cheek has successfully taken the reader out of 2019 to recreate America in the 1950s, the innocence and the worldly in Cape May. It’s a very polished debut that has me wanting more of it all – the show more debauchery, the emotional rollercoaster and the shattering of innocence.

Henry and Effie are newlyweds who have left their small town of Georgia to honeymoon in New Jersey in Effie’s uncle’s house. Effie has fond memories of childhood summers in Cape May, but autumn Cape May as a grown up is not what she had in her head. Her uncle has left mean instructions (right down to the amount of alcohol the couple can drink without replacing the bottle) and most things are shut. It’s an awkward start to a honeymoon but things seem to plod along relatively nicely in the bedroom and outside. It’s just so…pedestrian and unexciting for the pair that they are set on leaving early to return home. A light down the street has the young couple dressing up to formally meet their neighbours. But it turns out to be a childhood frenemy of Effie’s – Clara. Effie doesn’t really have fond memories of Clara, but she and Henry agree to stay for dinner. And a party. And more and more until they are involved in the daily lives of Clara, her lover Max and his recently discovered sister, Alma. All three are way more worldly than the innocent sweethearts and introduce them to a world of drinking, carefree fantasies and sex. It can only end badly.

Chip Cheek’s description of Henry and Effie’s descent into a darker world of sex is more explicit than anything Yates or Fitzgerald ever wrote, but overall the novel still fits in with those authors. An update for the times perhaps. The destruction of innocence is sweet at first, but Henry is particular is taken further into the world of adultery. Yet when Effie does similar, he reacts like a typical man of the times, treating Effie like his property. The ending, which describes the rest of the couple’s lives, does feel a bit superfluous but in retrospect demonstrates Effie’s defiance of this claim. (I’m also a sucker for knowing everything about characters in a good story, so I’m not complaining). The story is richly detailed and captures Henry’s warring emotions, thoughts and bargaining to try to talk himself of what he believes are his misdeeds.

Overall, Cape May is a complex entwining of relationships in the vein of literary fiction, yet it is also an absolute page-turner. Add Chip Cheek to your list of must-read authors.

Thank you to Hachette for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

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In 1957, Henry and Effie, married straight out of a small-town Georgia high school, honeymoon in Cape May, New Jersey. Borrowing a cousin’s cottage, they arrive at the end of September to find the town deserted — naturally, because it’s a place where the well-to-do summer, and now they’re gone.

That’s only the first fact to surprise the innocent, unsophisticated newlyweds, and Effie’s instinct is to go home after a couple days. But Henry, unsure of her, though they’ve known show more each other for years — he can’t quite believe that the mayor’s daughter chose him — takes her notion to mean that she doesn’t want his company. That insecurity leads to much trouble and the discovery that the Jersey shore is much farther from rural Georgia than the mere distance indicates.

A group of city sophisticates welcomes them next door to a nonstop party, though absorb would be a fitter word. Max, a sometime writer, heir to a shipping fortune, and a lewd drunk, drives the festivities with his lover, Clara, who was in show business at one time. Alma, Max’s sullen, gorgeous half-sister, acts as though she’d rather be anywhere else, but she draws Henry’s eye.

At first, he’s more susceptible to this crowd’s invitations than his bride, attracted by the veneer of “civilization,” as he calls it, what these mildly degenerate Yankees represent to him. And in that fever, he loses his common sense and his moral compass, helped by a power outage after a storm (something of a cliché, there).

Cheek’s a terrific observer, especially of social interactions and sexual mores. What could have been a stagey, turgid domestic drama stewing in its own juices feels surprisingly open, fluid, and freewheeling. This requires a subtle touch, the ability to evoke movement even when people are sitting still, and simmering tension below the surface, at all of which Cheek excels.

Throughout, there’s a sexual charge, like a humid summer day before a thunderstorm. All of these elements derive from the prose, which does its work simply, never calling attention to itself, yet conveys the mood in vivid, active images.

For all that, though, Cape May falls short of memorable. I understand Henry, somewhat, but Effie hardly at all, and the sophisticates even less. They seem too brittle to feel anything, rushing from experience to experience to prevent what they most fear, boredom. I would have wanted flashes of depth, glimmers of what they’re trying not to face; though, since the newlyweds provide the only perspectives as naïve observers, that’s difficult to achieve. Cheek seems to be saying that the Georgians’ innocence is also a veneer, that they share their new friends’ desires, and we’re all the same underneath, city mouse or country mouse.

That’s fine, but absent fuller characterizations or any particular connection to time and place — if it weren’t for clothing styles or brief mentions of current events, I would never have known it was the late Fifties — we’re left with what sex means, or what it means to Henry, Effie, and the reader.

And as for sex, there’s plenty of it, licit and otherwise. Cheek does well to make the scenes matter-of-fact and realistic — no breathless, inflated bodice-ripper descriptions — though I do wonder how these people manage to get it on after half a dozen gins-and-tonic.

Cheek’s a fine writer whose subject matter and theme remind me of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, also about newlyweds clueless about marriage. But the people in Cape May seem more a collection of attitudes than complex humans, and their plight therefore less than powerful. show less

Four Stars for this debut book by Chip Cheek.

Set in Cape May, NJ in 1957. A young (17/20) and naive honeymoon couple, Effie and Henry, from a small town in Georgia use Effie’s uncles house for their two week honeymoon. As they are learning to get use to each other as a married couple, they are disappointed that Cape May is a relative ghost town due to off season. Just as they are planning on leaving early, they run into a friend of Effie’s from her teenage years. What happens next can show more only be described as a alcohol fueled, sexual awakening which will set the tone for the next week of their honeymoon, and their married life. Clara, Max and Alma are much more worldly that Effie and Henry get sucked in very easily and quickly to their escapades.

Though the sex described can be explicit at times, it is necessary for how the story enfolds. A sad telling, mostly from Henry’s justified point of view, we never really hear about Effie’s take on the promiscuous antics, but I think the author explains what it does to them, individually and as a couple, in the final chapters. We see the sad aftermath. The first part of the story drags slightly, but then takes off in a fury. I would have liked to have heard what happened to Clara, Max and Alma. The writing is top notch with the story line and descriptive elements of Cape May and the climate of the 50s. I look forward to reading this author again.

Thanks to Chip Cheek and Celadon Books for this ARC. Opinion is my own! show less

Henry und Effie sind noch sehr jung als sie 1957 heiraten. Sie sind jedoch nicht nur jung, sondern auch unerfahren und müssen sich in ihren Flitterwochen fernab der Südstaatenheimat erst als Mann und Frau kennenlernen. Das verschlafene Urlaubsstädtchen Cape May ist ihr Ziel, doch im Herbst ist der Ort fast ausgestorben und die ersten Tage bestehen nur aus ihnen beiden. Mit der Ankunft von Clara und ihren glamourösen New Yorker Freunden ändert sich alles und aus der beschaulichen Ruhe show more wird eine aufreizende Unruhe, die Henry und Effie gleichermaßen ergreift. Sie sind fasziniert von diesen Menschen, die einen so anderen Lebensstil als sie beide pflegen, doch die Faszination droht Überhand zu nehmen und sie in den Abgrund zu stürzen.

Chip Cheeks Debütroman überzeugt für mich vor allem durch das authentische Zeitgefühl, das er erweckt. Keinen Moment zweifelt man daran, sich Ende der 1950er Jahre zu befinden und kann so auch leicht diesen Zauber nachvollziehen, den die ausschweifenden Partys der New Yorker auf die beiden Jugendlichen vom Land haben. Das Buch besticht vor allem durch die Atmosphäre und des Ortes, der quasi ausgestorben ist und es der Handlung so ermöglicht, sich ganz auf die kleine Gruppe zu konzentrieren.

Im Zentrum steht die Frage danach, was die Liebe eigentlich ausmacht. Man ist zunächst verwundert, dass Effie und Henry zueinander gefunden haben, zu unterschiedlich scheinen sie beide in Herkunft und Vorstellungen vom Leben zu sein. Doch nach und nach zeigt sich, dass sie, je näher sie sich kommen, sie immer mehr zu sich ergänzenden Partnern werden, die lediglich noch lernen müssen, als Paar zu funktionieren. Diese Idylle wird durch Henrys Faszination für die junge Alma gefährdet und nun beginnt der Roman nicht nur psychologisch spannend zu werden – wie kann der junge, frisch verheiratete Mann mit der Verwirrung seiner Gefühle umgehen? – sondern auch die anderen Facetten von Liebe zu beleuchten.

„Wir lieben uns, wir mögen uns nur nicht besonders.“

So beschreiben sie am Ende ihre Zweisamkeit. Ihre Vorstellungen von Liebe und Ehe werden schon ganz zu Beginn auf eine schwere Probe gestellt. Damit fängt Chip Cheek nicht nur die Zerrissenheit der Figuren, sondern auch den Umbruch der Zeit glaubwürdig ein. Der Roman ist Anfang und Ende zugleich, rauschend und intensiv, voller widersprüchlicher Emotionen – wie eben große Umwerfungen sind. show less