false 57370373 61416 406564 0142004324 9780142004326 11 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174490630m/406564.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/406564.Heart_You_Bully_You_Punk 3.36 77 Heart, You Bully, You Punk (and what a title it is) tells the story of Ann, a math whiz at a private high school in Brooklyn, and two people who loom large in her life: her father, Wally, who owns a restaurant called Game in Manhattan, and her teacher, a quietly mysterious woman named Esker. When Esker and Wally begin to fall in love, Cohen gives us a story that's immediate and elegant, characters who are lovable and maddening, dialogue that's silly and serious and wonderfully human. But what makes this small novel really terrific is its choice of venues: the school and the restaurant. Both locales are wonderfully novelistic, crowded with characters and lousy with rituals recognizable to anyone who has haunted such joints. Ann quizzes her classmate Denise on whether or not she thinks Esker is poignant. "Denise remained unconvinced. 'She's just eerie.' 'Eerie' is a big word this year at The Prospect School, where its connotation is not derogatory; it's a catch-all for anything enigmatic or unplumbed." Likewise, Cohen nails nice little details of the emotional life of a restaurant, like Wally's ritual of having a nightly cocoa with his maitre d', Nuncio. "They've had little manly crushes on each other for seven years; they always will." Cohen launches her characters into the waters of heartbreak, but these small noticings keep the book grounded, funny, and always very alive. --Claire Dederer]]> 180363 3.61 447 86 0 0 false Tue May 26 09:28:18 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 09:28:18 -0700 2009