Lake effect

Kliatt, July, 2003 by Nola Theiss

COHEN, Rich. Lake effect. Random House, Vintage. 208p. c2002. 0-375-72533-4. $12.00.

SA

The decade of the '80s is still so recent that there are not many memoirs yet written about it. For Rich Cohen, the '80s was his coming-of-age decade and Glencoe on the North Shore of Chicago his fledging perch. In this story of his high school and college years, Cohen populates his world with his friends, parents and teachers and, especially, his best friend, Jamie Drew, known by all as Drew-licious. Drew was the boy with the most charm and promise and whose family (minus his father) had the least money in the affluent world of Glencoe. As the friends disperse to colleges around the country, Jamie becomes sidetracked and some of his carefully hidden secrets are revealed. The author's bittersweet recounting of his youth and his friendships is more than a personal story, although the rites of passage of his high school years and graduation are told with affection for the participants. Cohen, an author, writer for the New Yorker, and a contributing editor of Rolling Stone, captures the spirit of a specific time and place, but he also conveys the tenderness of youth on the brink of promise fulfilled and dissipated. Nola Theiss, Sanibel, FL