“Waiting was death, and total commitment his only chance.”
I don’t know what I expected with Gabriel Tallent’s Crux (Riverhead 2026), but it wasn’t what I got. The more I think about the novel, the more I have issues with it, so I’m going to get this out before I completely hate it. I said earlier it’s a bit My Girl meets Dawson’s Creek meets Demon Copperhead meets climbing, and it could work. If someone else wrote it.
Quick summary: Tamma and Dan are best friends, like their mothers had been before they fell out. Dan is the “golden child” and the “only hope” of his parents. Tamma is crass, rough, and unlikely to rise above the white trash life she’d been born into. Dan’s parents tell him she will only hold him back. The two friends find escape in climbing – a frenzied obsession for Tamma and a mental health grounding exercise for Dan. As high school seniors, they are at a crossroads – college or climb for Dan, and domesticity or adventure for Tamma. They are at the crux of their young lives – the most difficult part of the climb.
Things I liked: The cover. The details with the climbing. The concept.
Things that didn’t work for me: How Tamma is written like a twelve-year-old boy. The dialogue. Dan’s long-winded epiphanies about his mother and himself. The relationship between Dan and Tamma. How Tallent writes women in general. Did I mention the dialogue?
I think the novel could have been stronger with two male leads because there is such an intensity in same sex friendships in high school. The same concepts of golden child and white trash on the cusp of the moment when everything is going to change would still apply. And it would remove a lot of what I disliked about the novel.
As for Tamma, she had the potential to be a great character with a great story. I want someone to pick her up, dust her off, and do her justice.
A Girl Named Tommi 