Stubbs and Bernadette

Stubbs and Bernadette
Levi Montgomery
CreateSpace (September 2009)
ISBN 9781448680573
202 Page
$12.95 paperback

I dare you not to like Stubbs and Bernadette by Levi Montgomery.  Double dog dare you!  This book made me late for work on more than once, its that hard to put down.  There is something so compelling and sweet about the way that Montgomery describes Bernadette, you just want to shield her from the world.  Bernadette in this case is Bernadette Elsbeth McIntyre and the name is bigger than the girl that wears it.  She is described as a waif, an elf, a sixteen-year-old in a twelve-year-old’s body and you’ll be able to immediately picture her.  There was always someone in everyone’s High School that resembles her.  She is the artsy girl, the one that doesn’t dress just right, the one that never quite fit in.

Tyler Stubbs doesn’t have a chance.  By completely ignoring him, she enchants him as none of the more ‘available’ girls in school can.  From the first glimpse of her painting her toenails before class, he’s hooked.  As the new kid, he’s supposed to be more worried about fitting in with the popular kids, or the jocks, or some other group that is socially acceptable.  Instead he finds himself attracted to the misfit.  She’s attracted to him too, but so socially awkward that it takes half the book before she even really admits it, to herself or to us.

The conflict in this book is Bernadette herself.  She has a condition or a syndrome or something that’s never fully defined but it’s a big one.  She has very little impulse control and it comes out in inappropriate ways.  This scene is typical of several in the book, as Bernadette takes it on herself to dress the naked watermelons she and Stubbs encounter in a store:

“Amid the shouts and laughter and confusion, the grocer comes running.  Tyler can’t really tell what the grocer’s saying.  There’s a bit of a language barrier, and he’s pretty upset, but he can tell he wants her to leave! Now! Go! Get! Shoo!  She isn’t paying any attention to him, just wrapping melons methodically, sticking her tongue out the tiny little concentrating bit.  He’s beginning to fear they’ll call the police or something, so he goes to her, shakes her elbow, gets her attention…

This may be the first time Stubbs has to shake her out of this reverie, but it won’t be the last, and eventually it becomes too much.  As much as he loves her, he can’t save her from herself.  Ever had a friend like that?  A lover?  It’s frustrating, and this book will resonate with you.  You’ll find yourself agonizing along with Tyler Stubbs as he tries to figure out what to heck to do about his weirdo girlfriend.

The problem with Bernadette, and really with many of us, is that she doesn’t think she has a problem until it’s finally pointed out to her.  She’s convinced that the rest of the world is wrong and she’s the only one that gets it.  Even when her impulse control almost kills someone, she doesn’t own it, it owns her.  Stubbs finally has to sacrifice their relationship to save the girl he loves, and only then does it sink in to Bernadette that she needs to change.

How she changes and what happens next will just have to wait until you read this book, because you really owe it to yourself to give it a read.  All of Levi Montgomery’s books are good, really good, but this one is my favorite so far.  There is something about the characters that is compelling, and his writing is always fresh and hard to put down.  My
only lament about this book is that it ended too soon.  I really was left wanting more.

Cursing the Cougar is two books in one.  Which book you like says a lot about you as a reader.  The first book is a lushly written coming-of age story that crests and falls on the emotions of the characters.  This is the kind of book they don’t write anymore but should, Jane Eyre in blue jeans holding a torque wrench.  The second book-within-a-book is a taut psychological thriller complete with deranged bad-guy and brief glimpses into a warped mind.  While it would be easy to dismiss Cursing the Cougar as lacking in direction, it’s actually in the intersection of these two tales that we realize that life is LIKE that, sometimes evil visits our slowly simmering lives and turns up the heat.

In Cougar, Levi Montgomery introduces us to Tug and his teenage daughter Morgan.  Tug drives a tow truck, but there is much more that lurks below his surface.  Since his wife died (as far as Morgan knows), he has been raising her himself.  Sometimes it’s easy, but now that the teenage years are upon them it’s more… not.  Morgan tries to unravel the mystery of boys while Tug tries to unravel the mystery of teenagers.  Montgomery gives us a glimpse into the world of teens with this lunch room description:

Morgan sits in the lunch room listening to the gabble.  Lauren sits across from her with her latest acquisition, a skinny red-headed boy named Clay.  Or Clayton, maybe.  She didn’t pay that much attention.  He’ll be gone next week.  Next to Lauren is Megan, permanently attached to Guy.  They got themselves surgically joined at the age of fourteen.  Why can’t she find one like that?  Guy’s the perfect other half of Megan, filling in around her like water fills in around rocks.

The neighbor boy is Hector.  I picture him as Carrot-top, gangly and unattractive unless you like gangly.  We know early on that Hector and Morgan are on a collision course with their feelings about each other so I’m not giving away that much by telling you.  They spend a lot of the story pretending they aren’t.  I guarantee you’ll be like me and end up yelling “kiss her already!” at Hector.  And he deserves it, man that kid is dense for a smart kid.

Oh, you’ll wonder what the title of the book means.  It’s about courage, I’ll give that much away.  Specifically, it’s about courage in the face of danger.  Oh, another hint, Tug and Morgan like to bow hunt.  I probably have given away too much, but it won’t detract from your enjoyment of the story to know that.  In fact, that’s one of the nice things about this book.  I could spend three pages telling you quirky little fun facts about the characters and you’d still find many more.  Every page seems to serve up a tasty little morsel to draw us further into the world of Tug and Morgan and Hector and… Annie.  Annie is Hector’s mom and might be Tug’s love interest.  Except she has a dark secret, someone from her past that haunts her present:

Even with the hard drives, the thing was way harder than it should have been.  They went through drive after drive, not finding anything.  He tried to resign himself to the fact that it had been a long shot to begin with, but he just couldn’t stand the thought of her getting away from him like that.  He wants to feel her throat crushing in his hands…

Now I KNOW Levi is going to be annoyed with me for giving away so much.  His carefully crafted prose doesn’t give it away, you have to earn it.  You have to learn and discover and grow with the characters.  I gave you a head start but it’s not going to do you much good, you’re still going to have to earn it.  Cursing the Cougar is well worth the entry fee, it’s just simply a good book.  Well, TWO good books really.  The nice thing is, it doesn’t matter which one you enjoy more because either way you win.

Also from Levi Montgomery is Other Loves which I have also reviewed.