Like Life at These Speeds
, his well-received debut, Jackson's second novel takes a close look at a young man's coming-of-age. Narrator Leo Perry is an innocent and sensitive boy fumbling toward adulthood in the summer between high school and college. A lifeguard at the town swimming pool and son of a widowed physician, happy-go-lucky, late-blooming Leo pedals around town on a self-assembled racing bike and sometimes visits his cousins in the bucolic town where his deceased father grew up, where he fishes, makes eyes at a libidinous teen named Freeda and sleeps under the stars. With his mother off on a hard-earned vacation, Leo has the keys to her 1984 mint-condition Supra sports coupe, which he has been charged with selling. But, rifling through her papers one day, Leo discovers that his mother has cancer; "What could I do to help her? If she didn't even tell me, what could I do?" he wonders. But he doesn't dwell on it much, instead flinging himself into life. At times affecting, but mostly a patchwork of anecdotes, this novel reveals Leo's desires for love and connection (he beds classmate Jenny, but develops real feelings for her friend, E.B.) as well as his pleasant and eternal passivity. A procession of minor ailments and accidents stand for youth's attendant emotional growing pains, but readers may not find these—or any of the other vignettes, sweet or sad—add up to a fully satisfying portrait of a vital summer. Agent, David Dutton
. (May)
