This book is so dark. The writing was great and I appreciated what I think the author was going for, just not sure whether it totally worked for me. Looking forward to future books by this author. ( )

I could not put this book down! Excellent writing, time period well captured. ( )

This is my favorite book so far this year. A remarkable first novel. ( )

In CALF, Andrea Kleine uses a stream of consciousness narrative style to build suspense and show the similarities between true insanity and the more conventional teenage angst. She traces the evolution of the inner-most thoughts of Jeffrey Hackney—loosely based on John Hinckley Jr.— and Tammy, a teenager whose childhood friend was murdered by her mother—based on Kleine herself.

In alternating chapters, the novel follows Jeff and Tammy for one year in 1981. Kleine depicts Jeff as a young man who has a domineering father and submissive mother. He lacks self-confidence and is totally self-absorbed. Kleine admirably depicts Jeff’s aberrant thinking that progressively gets more and more strange. Ultimately, Jeff concludes that he and a rising young actress named Amber Carrol are meant for each other and he must rescue her. This episode is loosely based on Hinckley’s relentless stalking and attempts to communicate with Jodie Foster after seeing her play a vulnerable young prostitute in the 1976 film, Taxi Driver. Hackney’s bizarre fixation on Amber is eerily similar to what Hinckley went through with Foster.

Like Hackney, 11 year-old Tammy has a domineering father—stepfather in her case—and a mother who submits to his will over supporting Tammy. With Tammy’s monologue, Kleine depicts the thinking of a pre-teen in 80’s America. Also like Hackney and not unlike most pre-teens, Tammy feels alienated from her family and friends. She is disenchanted with life in general and expresses it in various acts of rebellion. Through Tammy, Kleine relives her own experience of having a close childhood friend murdered by her mother. Tammy’s neighbor, a friend of her sister Kirin, is murdered by her mother who is mentally ill. Ironically, Kleine’s neighbor and Hinckley were both found innocent by reason of insanity and were incarcerated in the same psych ward in Washington DC. Kleine claims that the became lovers.

After reading the blurbs on this book, one might reasonably expect that the relationship between the two murderers would be explored in CALF, but that was not Kleine’s theme. Instead, she artfully compares the thought processes that can exist in a truly deranged mind with those of a supposedly normal pre-adolescent. The similarities are unsettling and leave the reader contemplating how small the gulf might be between the two. Kleine puts Tammy in a position where she comes uncomfortably close to insanity, but this scene cannot be revealed without spoiling one of the joys of reading this remarkable book. ( )