Lake Effect - by Rich Cohen (Paperback)

About the Book

From the acclaimed author of "Tough Jews" and "The Avengers" comes this elegiac memoir that examines the nature of friendship and how it survives even as it's destined to change.

Book Synopsis

A bittersweet coming-of-age story that quietly bores to the essence of friendship and how it survives even as it is destined to change.

"So outrageous and so true.... the book rockets along, powered by the high octane of Cohen's candor [and] off-beat observations." --The New York Times Book Review

Raised in an affluent suburb on the North Shore of Chicago, Rich Cohen had a cluster of interesting friends, but none more interesting than Jamie Drew. Fatherless, reckless, and lower middle class in a place that wasn't, Jamie possessed such an irresistible insouciance and charm that even the teachers called him Drew-licious. Through the high school years of parties and Cub games and girls, of summer nights on the beach and forbidden forays into the blues bars of Chicago's notorious South Side, the two formed an inseparable bond. Even after Cohen went to college in New Orleans (Jamie went to Kansas) and then moved to New York, where he had a memorable interlude with the legendary New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, Jamie remained oddly crucial to his life.

Review Quotes

A New York Times Notable Book

Winner of the Great Lakes Book Award and the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library

"Lake Effect draws its characters with a sure hand. . . . Cohen's connection to his past seems to remain strong." --The New York Times

"So outrageous and so true. . . . the book rockets along, powered by the high octane of Cohen's candor [and] off-beat observations." --The New York Times Book Review

"Contains lines so heartbreakingly apt and funny I stopped to reread constantly. Cohen is a natural." --Jonathan Lethem

"Cohen writes with confidence and humor, and he deftly evokes the aimlessness of adolescence." --Chicago Sun-Times

"Cohen . . . has taken the everyday stuff of life and made it joyously readable. The mundane becomes richly evocative in his hands. The usual becomes unusual, the boring becomes interesting, the sweet becomes bittersweet, and Lake Effect becomes the proverbial book you can't put down." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Arresting and thoughtful. . . . Cohen brings back the flavor of the '80s culture with insight and humor." --The Washington Post

"Cohen has written a fine book." --Chicago Tribune

"A universal story of youth, maturity and love, Lake Effect is a probing meditation on the passage of time, an accomplished book." --Bookpage

About the Author

RICH COHEN is the author of Tough Jews and The Avengers. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, among many other publications. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He lives in New York City.