Darren Crovitz

Reviewed by Darren Crovitz, Arizona State University Department of English, Tempe, Arizona, USA.

On a stormy summer night, a 17-year-old girl stumbles into a deserted cafe in the tiny town of Pembina Lake, Manitoba.Noreen is a mess,bedraggled, rain soaked, and desperate,and she,s running away from her problems, just like she,s always done.Across the counter, Lynda, the proprietor, regards the girl with wary but compassionate eyes.Lynda has her own problems,a cafe that doesn,t do much business, for starters,and the last thing she needs is a runaway to worry about.But something in Noreen,s haunted look touches a chord in her, and she offers the girl a place to stay for the night.

So begins True Confessions of a Heartless Girl, a novel that explores the bruised regions of the heart through characters damaged by the misfortune of life.The story revolves around Noreen, the ,heartless girl, of the title.Running away from a dysfunctional family and a series of loser boyfriends, Noreen thinks she,s found the perfect man in kind-hearted Wesley.But a misunderstanding sends her out the door again; in a fit she steals Wesley,s money and his truck and speeds off to nowhere, ending up in the backwater town of Pembina Lake, where Lynda takes her in.

Noreen has been burned by love, and she,s distrustful of everyone.She lashes out at those who try to help her.What makes matters even more complicated are her regular morning bouts of dizziness and nausea.

Even when Noreen begins to accept the kindness and generosity of those around her, she still can,t seem to do anything right.She feels like a mistake, a constant problem to others, kicked to the curb of life.Maybe her best bet would be to just hit the road again and leave these small town people behind.Except....

Except each day she stays in Pembina Lake, Noreen grows closer to those around her and begins to see them not as adversaries and obstacles but as real people who struggle with the same kind of pain she is experiencing.There,s Lynda,s friend Del, for instance, haunted by his brother,s death many years ago, who carries with him a secret of guilt and shame.As Noreen starts to see the complexity of those around her and take an interest in their cares and worries, she begins to shed her sense of alienation and reach out to others.She finds that other people need the same touch of humanity that she herself craves, and her life and identity take on new meaning.

Darren Crovitz
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Hyphenology, or The Missing Link by Darren Crovitz
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But enough time has passed during which I've simply been "Darren" for the shadows of those memories to be replaced by the cleansing light of objectivity.
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This was what many of my father's friends called him, and I liked the manly abruptness of its sound, which seemed much more tough, declarative, and memorable than "Darren."
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Darren Crovitz
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Darren CrovitzDarren Crovitz teaches composition at Arizona State University.He is pursuing a Ph.D. in English Education.
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- The Secret Nature of Nicknames , Darren Crovitz