Product Description

As a boy, Charlie St Cloud narrowly survived a car crash that killed Sam, his little brother. Years later, still unable to recover from his loss, Charlie has taken a job tending to the lawns and monuments in the New England cemetery where Sam is buried. When he meets Tess Carroll, a captivating, adventurous woman in training for a solo sailing trip around the globe, they discover a beautiful and uncommon connection that, after a violent storm at sea, eventually forces them to choose between death and life, past and present, holding on and letting go. "The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud" is a romantic and uplifting novel about second chances and the liberating power of love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20962 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-20
• Released on: 2005-05-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The eponymous hero of The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud is a good boy; an American teenager who works hard at school, is good at sport and loves his mum and his little brother Sam. And then one terrible day, tragically, he finds himself responsible for Sam's death. Charlie dies too for a brief moment but is brought back to life by the skill of a paramedic. From that moment on, Charlie makes a sacrificial decision to live his life in the past. Until that is, he meets tough but beautiful yachtswoman Tess and he has to rethink life and death.

Ben Sherwood's novel is an unusual love story set against a background of bereavement and grief. Sherwood is a former TV news producer and journalist so not surprisingly this, his second novel, is perfectly well written, has attractive characters and a compelling story line. Yet, disappointingly, it feels one-dimensional, wholly predictable and ultimately, unsatisfying.

Rights to the film version were sold even before The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud was published and perhaps herein lies the answer. It is easy to visualise on celluloid: a feel-good, light romance with equal measure of tears and smiles, not too demanding. Tess could have been written for Julia Roberts.

Maybe it wasn't written as a film script, but what's missing is what could have made this a great book. After all, the central theme affects us all: what happens after death and, perhaps far more importantly, what happens to the living, left behind to mourn and cope? If you're looking for meaningful insights and serious answers, this is sadly not the place to find them. --Carey Green

Review
Two near-death experiences serve as bookends for this initially beguiling second novel about the interactions of the living, the dead, and the in-between. For 15-year-old Charlie St. Cloud and his kid brother Sam, diehard Red Sox fans, Marblehead is the perfect hometown: neighborly and only 30 minutes from Boston's Fenway Park. When Charlie decides to "borrow" a neighbor's car to catch a night game, everything works out fine until he smashes into a tractor-trailer. A paramedic resuscitates him, but can't save Sam. What to do? The devoted Charlie has promised Sam he'll always be there for him. He's able to make good on his word when Sam shows up in the cemetery. A ritual begins: every sundown for the next 13 years, Charlie and Sam meet to play ball. To keep their rendezvous, Charlie becomes the cemetery caretaker and sacrifices career opportunities, while Sam sacrifices his move to the next level of the spirit world. This could be unbearably sappy, but it's not; Sherwood grounds these curious trysts in small-town realities. Eventually a complication arrives: Tess Carroll, expert sailor, preparing for a solo round-the-world race. She runs into Charlie at the cemetery, and they both see stars. Things get serious fast. Should Charlie put Tess before Sam? How much do the living owe the dead? It's a good set-up, but Sherwood ruins it by misdirecting the reader. It turns out Tess herself may be dead. Her sloop is missing, and search-and-rescue missions are underway. Regardless, Tess and Charlie proceed to have sex in an awkward, unsettling scene that borders on necrophilia. Sherwood further fuzzes up the picture by seeming to change the rules that govern human/spirit relations in the middle of the game. A disappointing successor to The Man Who Ate the 747 (2000). There's a big audience out there for imaginative treatments of the afterlife (look at The Lovely Bones), provided the author keeps control of the material, which is not the case here. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Ben Sherwood is the author of The Man Who Ate the 747. He was an award-winning journalist with NBC and ABC News, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, he lives with his wife in New York and Los Angeles and is working on a new novel. To contact him, please visit his website at www.bensherwood.com.

Customer Reviews

well worth reading
The synopsis does not really reflect the story. I think this book would appear to lots of different readers and at lots of different levels. It is based on a premise that requires the reader to 'go with it' and that is not entirely new, but apart from that it is a really good story, and a great read.

not bad
Although it wasn't as good as I had expected after reading the blurb on the back it certainly wasn't bad. It's a nice story, easy read and although I've given it an average mark I wouldn't say it's an average book. That doesn't quite make sense, what I mean is that the story isn't your average boy meets girl, boy loses girl love story. It's different enough to warrant reading on a wet afternoon rather than cleaning windows.

twee but good
I enjoyed this. It was certainly very twee but it was very uplifting and enjoyable. People I know thought it was complete rubbish but, in my mind, they've missed some good entertainment. If you're not looking for writing of a literary quality, can cope with full on sentimentalism and enjoy a good story then read this, it is good.