The Sterile Cuckoo (Norton Paperback Fiction)
by John Treadwell Nichols
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Treadwell NicholsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1996-11-17
ISBN: 0393315355
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of The Sterile Cuckoo (Norton Paperback Fiction)
Book Review: Very underrated piece of literature
Summary: 5 Stars
John Nichols made quite an impression with his first novel about a first life-altering love. Though written in 1965, it proves that even though times change, emotions and some situations don't.
Jerry Payne was on his way to college when he meets Pookie Adams in the bus depot. She is a year younger - she's on her way back home to begin her senior year in high school - and her nonstop talking and outlook on life really irks him. They take one bus together to another stop and, sitting next to each other, start talking about everything and nothing at once. Suddenly, before Jerry knows it and not being able to stop it, he finds himself kissing Pookie.
By the time his bus pulls away, taking him to college, Pookie realizes she never got his address (or name, for that matter!) and he shouts his information out the window. Jerry didn't think Pookie heard him but 17 letters reach him from September to Valentine's Day. His father asked him if he was running a forwarding service and to please give the woman his college address.
While Pookie's letters were coming, Jerry got involved in college life - of the fraternity kind. His roommates were into the frat thing and Jerry at first wanted to show that he could be part of the crowd in a sophisticated way (with his guitar playing) but, in time, he fell into the swing of things like the rest of them. By the time Jerry and Pookie reunited (during her freshmen year of college, he having seen her picture in a college publication in the frat house's library and he and his buddies showing up at her sorority house uninvited and unwelcome), Jerry was the stereotypical frat guy - reeking of beer, plopped in a brother's jalopy (that was affectionately called "The Bitch"), and failing everything ... fast.
It was during his sophomore year in college that he and Pookie really got together - Jerry slowly, and unknowingly at first, falling in love with Pookie through her letters. He would cut classes in the morning to wait for her letters, he couldn't wait to meet her for houseparties and weekend get togethers.
When he was in danger of failing school, he begged the academic powers that be for another chance and was granted a stay. He vowed to work through the spring break to pull himself together. During this time, he and Pookie lived together at the frat house and fell even deeper in love.
When Jerry, Pookie, and a few friends were partying in the college cemetery in his junior year, they were in the middle of a toast on top of a grave marker when the dead woman's husband - one of the most respected professors of the university - came upon the scene, flowers dropped to his side, and simply walked away (probably too hurt for words). This scene coming after all four of them were lying in the grass and Jerry just sensing that the magic had left his relationship with Pookie.
After that incident, things were never quite the same between Jerry and Pookie. They drifted apart, without really knowing it. Towards the very end, they couldn't even agree on a suicide pact - how to do it, who was going to go first, etc. It seemed as though both of them were trying to hold on to the dead relationship for dear life but it got to the point where Pookie said, "It's all over, isn't it?"
The book comes to an ending where you have to fill in the blanks (did Pookie commit suicide or not? Jerry didn't feel a need to know for sure) but it's the sort of ending life deals: You fall in love with someone whom you never thought you'd even remotely like in a million years, you have an intense relationship with them (physically and emotionally), and then, for unknown reasons, the magic disappears (almost overnight). What you found cute and lovable before becomes tiresome. Even so, you try to hold on but you can't. You feel the relationship is over but it's like no one ever gets around to formally ending it.
In the end, the person falls into a special place in your heart and mind but you feel as if you'll spoil the memory of that time in your life by getting an update every now and again.
Forty years later and love sure doesn't change its tune.
Summary of The Sterile Cuckoo (Norton Paperback Fiction)
Riding from Oklahoma to St. Louis next to the astonishing Pookie Adams, eighteen-year-old Jerry Payne little realizes that he is at the beginning of his most memorable love affair.
While Pookie gets off at St. Louis, she pursues Jerry by letter and then in person?and before he knows it, he's involved with a seemingly crazy, startlingly honest girl. Pookie helps Jerry leave behind his beer-blasted frat self as she teaches him to open his heart to her. Then, suddenly, she disappears, leaving in her wake an eternal trail of love and wonder.Literature & Fiction Books
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