Love Sick, by Jake Coburn
Coburn, Jake (2005). Love Sick. NY: Dutton Books. 228 pages.
Former star athlete Ted has pretty much ruined his chance at college, thanks to a drunk driving accident that messed up his knee and caused him to lose his scholarship. He gets a second chance, however, when a mysterious man named Michael offers him an unusual opportunity. If Ted will watch over (read: spy on) the freshman daughter of a well-connected New York businessman and report her activities to Michael, Ted will get a free pass to Brown University. Of course, the task is not as easy as it seems: Erica, the girl Ted is assigned to “watch” is a not-so-secret bulimic and Ted finds himself sympathizing with her compulsion to binge and purge and, eventually, falling in love with her.
I didn’t really want to like this book, mostly because I had some pretty prejudicial notions about its author. Coburn is the youthful author (four years younger than I . . . ) of 2003’s Prep, a novel loosely based on his teen years as a private school student in NYC, and one in what seems to be a long line of young authors whose hipness is supposed to be related to their age. That said, color me surprised! Love Sick was pretty good! I thought the premise seemed a bit out there, but ended up being a good vehicle for addressing issues of intimacy–real intimacy between two people who develop a relationship and the just as real but slightly imbalanced intimacy between a knowing and unknowing partner–and addiction. Allowing the antiheroes–neither Ted nor Erica are shiny, happy teens (remember the drunk driving and the bulimia?)–to contemplate ethical situations that seem to grow more slippery as they consider them is an interesting twist as well.