I was first assigned to read the opening pages of Endless Love by Scott Spencer in a writing workshop led by Roy Hoffman.  This was not a book I would have picked up on my own, if only because it conjured up images of a gauzy Brooke Shields romance film from the early 1980s and lyrics from Lionel Richie and Diana Ross.  From the novel’s title, and those sounds and images, I was expecting something sappy.  Instead, what I encountered was perhaps one of the greatest, most tortured and explosive openings to a novel that I’d ever read.

After reading the opening in workshop, I purchased a copy of the novel, but it sat on my shelf for years (as many books do), waiting until I had the time and the right frame of mind to read it.  I knew the time for Endless Love had come when I saw the theatrical trailer for the film’s re-make (opening on Valentine’s Day, 2014).  This was a gripping trailer, with Lionel Richie’s song replaced by an ominous a capella rendition of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” sung by Florence + The Machine (yes, another 1980’s song, but it’s creepy and it works).  Of course, it’s easy to make good trailers from bad movies, so I’ll reserve my opinion of the film, but I might try watching both films after reading the novel.

Such a thrill, to re-read those opening pages and to know that this time I get to read the entire story.  Scott Spencer creates a magnificent, electric charge with the first chapter.  In the opening lines, the first-person narrator tells us that his life was divided forever by the story he begins to relate; he tells us that he is about to set fire to a house holding his girlfriend and the four people that he cares most about in the world.  Wow.  Got your attention?

Suspense builds as we get thumbnail sketches of each of the people in the house as the soon-to-be-arsonist watches them through the window.  Additionally we learn that he had for months lived with the family, openly sharing the bed of their fifteen year-old daughter.  We learn that, for some reason, he’d been banished from the house for a term of thirty days, and this is the instigation for his lighting the match.  Not because he intends to burn down their house or endanger them, but only because he’s desperate for their attention and knocking on the door won’t do him any good.  Even before the fire begins, we learn that the outcome will be that he’s brought to trial as an arsonist and is sent to a psychiatric hospital.

What a terrific wind-up for a novel.  The imminent danger of the fire to the loved ones inside; the potential for a life full of guilt; the desperation of already having been separated from a family and a girlfriend; the mad passion of young lust.  And, too, there are the mysteries we look forward to understanding—how is their family so eccentric, not only because they’d allowed him to live there with their fifteen year-old daughter, but because when he bursts into the house to save them from the fire, he finds that they are all tripping on LSD!  As readers, we want to see how he’ll deal with the aftermath, but we also want to understand what came before: why was he banished from the house?  Why was he so tortured that he couldn’t wait out his sentence to return to them?  And, on top of this, the seed for a potentially unreliable narrator is sewn by the third page when the narrator says that even he cannot understand his true motives and that the statement he gives to authorities begins to feel less than authentic even to himself.  This is a narrator whose sanity is questionable, and yet if he is only temporarily insane, we wonder whether this family or this girlfriend might have driven him there.

I love opening chapters that operate on so many levels!

I’ll be back soon to give my thoughts on the rest of the novel.  In the meantime, here are some YouTube clips related to the movies (neither of which I’ve seen yet, but intend to watch both after reading…I always prefer the novel, but I must admit I’m curious to watch both of these, even though the 1981 version was considered a failure despite its star-power.  The 1981 version was Tom Cruise’s debut, Ian Zeiring’s debut, and had a young James Spader as well).  I’m also including a clip of the author, Scott Spencer speaking at a conference (not related to Endless Love, although it’s mentioned in the Q&A and he calls the movie “an icon to bad movie-making”, and how excited he was to get a $10,000 advance for the novel).

Endless Love 1981 (Song Film Excerpt)

Endless Love 2014 (Trailer)

Brooke Shields 1981 Interview

Scott Spencer, National Book Festival 2010