Helpful Score: 1
This book is written as a fictional biography. Jamie Sommers has been abused both as a child and an adult. The story skips around from his encounters with a vampire, to his life as a sailor on the sea, to being held in two sanitariums, and being terrified of the night, to his child hood, and back to the relationship he devolopes with the now reformed vampire. I thought the book was good, if slow moving. It was unlike any book I've read before. I know it was written in a biographical style, birth life and death, but as a reader I just kept hoping Jamie's life would get better. Then he dies just before the end of the book. I thought Hawkes Harbor was interesting. It was strange and different, but it was interesting. Does this review help?
Helpful Score: 1
Erasing age and genre barriers, prize-winning, bestselling YA author Hinton turns out a dark, funny, scary, suspenseful tale that will entertain mainstream and adventure/horror readers alike. Jamie Sommers is orphaned at the age of eight in 1950 and sent to live with some nasty nuns until graduating as a troubled young man to a life at sea. After surviving a number of life-threatening adventures in exotic ports, he ends up in the small town of Hawkes Harbor on the Delaware coast, where he stumbles into a situation so dire his entire life is changed in a manner of minutes. His new employer, the mysterious Grenville Hawke, lord of Hawkes Hall, known to Jamie as It, the Thing and the Vampire, almost kills Jamie, then goes on to enslave him for years to come. Moving back and forth through time, Hinton twists and shapes her bleak material until the story and the reader's expectations have been turned upside down. This is an adult novel, meaning that Hinton gets to write sex scenes and use the word fuck when she wants to, but the basic elements that made her 30-year-old book TheOutsiders a long-time bestseller are present in this rousing read. This is a contemporary Treasure Island with a genre-bending twist.
Spooky story. Demons, psychosis or vampires? 6 CDs. Unabridged. Great for a long commute.
Stephanie T. (stephkayeturner) reviewed Hawkes Harbor (Audio CD) (Unabridged) on + 33 more book reviews
What comes to mind when I say âS.E. Hintonâ? The Outsiders. Pony Boy. âNothing gold can stay.â Maybe Rumble Fish. Or Matt Dillon.
But what aboutâ¦vampires?
After Susan (!) E. Hinton's iconic books, The Outsiders (1967), That Was Then, This is Now (1971), and Rumble Fish (1975), she kept writing. And one of the novels she wrote, in 2004, was Hawkes Harbor.
I listened to this book on CD. After the first disc, I thought I'd be listening to the tale of a troubled young man, very similar to those titles I just mentioned. We get a glimpse of Jamie Sommers' childhood, then his wild times as a sailor and smuggler. We know he has gotten into trouble because he's telling all this to a psychiatrist in a mental institution.
However, on disc two, things get weird. The book becomes a classic tale ofâ¦boy meets vampire.
TL;DR ***SPOILER ALERT*** Boy meets vampire. Vampire enslaves boy. Boy goes crazy. Vampire commits boy to asylum. Both boy and vampire are cured. They become besties and live happily ever after.
WHAT the WHAT???
First of all, vampire gets cured? I had to make sure I hadn't skipped a disc when this just casually came up. While Jamie is âaway,â the vampire somehow meets AND IS CURED BY a doctor/historian named Louisa.
So the relationship of SLAVE to MASTER becomes just another friendly employer/employee, roommates in a big, haunted house kind of thing, with a casual mention of Stockholm syndrome. No big deal, right? The two men even go on a cruise together, where they both find romantic and sexual adventure.
My only way of processing this is to think that Ms. Hinton was somehow, consciously or unconsciously, writing an allegory about child abuse. Our vampire, Grenville Hawkes, is the abusive parent, and Jamie the child. Jamie is absolutely traumatized by Grenville's abuse, is helpless to escape it, and therefore copes as best he can. However, when Grenville âreforms,â Jamie gradually comes to trust him, and they have a mutually respectful relationship. Is this possible in formerly abusive parent/child relationships? I don't know if it's common, but I've heard of it in my own extended family.
The attempt falls flat, though. Too much telling, not showing, especially about important relationships. For example, you can never tell if Louisa's attitude toward Jamie on a given day will be bossy or fond. No real development happens for her, she just shifts personalities as needed for each scene.
So anyway, if you want to read a vampire tale that does not have sparkly skin or werewolves, but does have male bonding on a cruise ship, give it a try. It may be the weirdest book you've read all year.
But what aboutâ¦vampires?
After Susan (!) E. Hinton's iconic books, The Outsiders (1967), That Was Then, This is Now (1971), and Rumble Fish (1975), she kept writing. And one of the novels she wrote, in 2004, was Hawkes Harbor.
I listened to this book on CD. After the first disc, I thought I'd be listening to the tale of a troubled young man, very similar to those titles I just mentioned. We get a glimpse of Jamie Sommers' childhood, then his wild times as a sailor and smuggler. We know he has gotten into trouble because he's telling all this to a psychiatrist in a mental institution.
However, on disc two, things get weird. The book becomes a classic tale ofâ¦boy meets vampire.
TL;DR ***SPOILER ALERT*** Boy meets vampire. Vampire enslaves boy. Boy goes crazy. Vampire commits boy to asylum. Both boy and vampire are cured. They become besties and live happily ever after.
WHAT the WHAT???
First of all, vampire gets cured? I had to make sure I hadn't skipped a disc when this just casually came up. While Jamie is âaway,â the vampire somehow meets AND IS CURED BY a doctor/historian named Louisa.
So the relationship of SLAVE to MASTER becomes just another friendly employer/employee, roommates in a big, haunted house kind of thing, with a casual mention of Stockholm syndrome. No big deal, right? The two men even go on a cruise together, where they both find romantic and sexual adventure.
My only way of processing this is to think that Ms. Hinton was somehow, consciously or unconsciously, writing an allegory about child abuse. Our vampire, Grenville Hawkes, is the abusive parent, and Jamie the child. Jamie is absolutely traumatized by Grenville's abuse, is helpless to escape it, and therefore copes as best he can. However, when Grenville âreforms,â Jamie gradually comes to trust him, and they have a mutually respectful relationship. Is this possible in formerly abusive parent/child relationships? I don't know if it's common, but I've heard of it in my own extended family.
The attempt falls flat, though. Too much telling, not showing, especially about important relationships. For example, you can never tell if Louisa's attitude toward Jamie on a given day will be bossy or fond. No real development happens for her, she just shifts personalities as needed for each scene.
So anyway, if you want to read a vampire tale that does not have sparkly skin or werewolves, but does have male bonding on a cruise ship, give it a try. It may be the weirdest book you've read all year.
This was in interesting read in the premise, but it fell short. Jamie gets bitten by a "vampire" but he himself doesn't become one. In the long run, he becomes friends with the man who bit him who, for some unknown reason (never explained how this allegedly happens) reverts back to being human. I had to double check to be sure this audio CD wasn't abbreviated (it's not) because there are so many gaps in the story. Disappointing.
This book kept my interest from the start. I really like it and was sad when it ended.
