- Library Binding: 224 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060291990
- ISBN-13: 978-0060291990
- Product Dimensions: 18.4 x 13.4 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,442,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Breathing Underwater
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Product Description
Product Description
Read by Jon Cryer
Approx. 5 hours
3 cassettes
Nick is one of the chosen few at his high school: intelligent, popular, and wealthy. People think his life is pretty easy. Except for one thing. Nick has never told anyone about his father's violent temper.
When Nick meets Caitlin, he thinks she is the answer to all his problems. Caitlin is everything Nick has ever wanted--beautiful, talented, and in love with him. But then everything changes, and Nick must face the fact that he has gotten more from his father than green eyes and money.
Jon Cryer attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and has since worked in virtually every part of the entertainment industry from television and radio to Broadway and feature films. Some of his film credits include Pretty in Pink, Holy Man and No Small Affair. Some of his television credits include, doing voice work for Disney's Hercules and appearing in sitcoms like Dharma and Greg. Mr. Cryer also read Chet Gecko- Private Eye for Listening Library.
Approx. 5 hours
3 cassettes
Nick is one of the chosen few at his high school: intelligent, popular, and wealthy. People think his life is pretty easy. Except for one thing. Nick has never told anyone about his father's violent temper.
When Nick meets Caitlin, he thinks she is the answer to all his problems. Caitlin is everything Nick has ever wanted--beautiful, talented, and in love with him. But then everything changes, and Nick must face the fact that he has gotten more from his father than green eyes and money.
Jon Cryer attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and has since worked in virtually every part of the entertainment industry from television and radio to Broadway and feature films. Some of his film credits include Pretty in Pink, Holy Man and No Small Affair. Some of his television credits include, doing voice work for Disney's Hercules and appearing in sitcoms like Dharma and Greg. Mr. Cryer also read Chet Gecko- Private Eye for Listening Library.
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First Sentence
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I've never been in a courthouse before. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm going to say this once, and then we'll all forget it--I spent 90% of this book despising the main character, Nick Andreas. Now that it's out of the way, I can go on to say that I loved BREATHING UNDERWATER and even came, in some small way, to understand--if not actually like--Nick's character.
Nick is the kind of boy that you would look at and immediately say "man, that kid has it all." But you would be wrong. Because although he has a dad who makes a ton of money, and lives in a big, fancy house, and drives a shiny red sports car, Nick doesn't have a fairytale life. His father is abusive, both mentally and physically, and he can't even remember his mother. He has a best friend, Tom, who has the kind of family he wishes he had himself, and a pretty important A-list group of schoolkids that he hangs out with. His life isn't great, but he manages--until he meets Caitlin, falls in love, and things all fall apart.
BREATHING UNDERWATER starts out with Nick appearing in court in answer to a restraining order that his once girlfriend, Caitlin McCourt, has taken out against him. The judge doesn't fall for Nick's innocent "who me?" act, and sentences him to stay away from Caitlin, both on school grounds and off; to enroll in a six month counseling class dealing with family violence and anger management; and to keep a journal, at least five hundred words per week, detailing what happened to end up where he is, and why.
A lot of the book is told through Nick's journal, and it's through the words he writes that we come to know how abuse is a cycle--and how, many times, the abuser doesn't even realize that he's become like the person he most hates. This is Nick's story, the dawning realization that everything he hates about his father is manifested in his treatment of Caitlin. How did a boy who supposedly has it all end up beating his girlfriend senseless in a parking lot? How can love be so mixed up with the need to control that it leaves you breathless and shaking, angry at the person you love the most?
Alex Flinn has written a very important story, that of family violence and the toll it takes on everyone involved. This is the kind of cycle that needs to be broken, before more young people like Nick repeat the only thing they know. A truly informative book, BREATHING UNDERWATER is not to be missed.
Reviewed by: Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius"
Nick is the kind of boy that you would look at and immediately say "man, that kid has it all." But you would be wrong. Because although he has a dad who makes a ton of money, and lives in a big, fancy house, and drives a shiny red sports car, Nick doesn't have a fairytale life. His father is abusive, both mentally and physically, and he can't even remember his mother. He has a best friend, Tom, who has the kind of family he wishes he had himself, and a pretty important A-list group of schoolkids that he hangs out with. His life isn't great, but he manages--until he meets Caitlin, falls in love, and things all fall apart.
BREATHING UNDERWATER starts out with Nick appearing in court in answer to a restraining order that his once girlfriend, Caitlin McCourt, has taken out against him. The judge doesn't fall for Nick's innocent "who me?" act, and sentences him to stay away from Caitlin, both on school grounds and off; to enroll in a six month counseling class dealing with family violence and anger management; and to keep a journal, at least five hundred words per week, detailing what happened to end up where he is, and why.
A lot of the book is told through Nick's journal, and it's through the words he writes that we come to know how abuse is a cycle--and how, many times, the abuser doesn't even realize that he's become like the person he most hates. This is Nick's story, the dawning realization that everything he hates about his father is manifested in his treatment of Caitlin. How did a boy who supposedly has it all end up beating his girlfriend senseless in a parking lot? How can love be so mixed up with the need to control that it leaves you breathless and shaking, angry at the person you love the most?
Alex Flinn has written a very important story, that of family violence and the toll it takes on everyone involved. This is the kind of cycle that needs to be broken, before more young people like Nick repeat the only thing they know. A truly informative book, BREATHING UNDERWATER is not to be missed.
Reviewed by: Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius"
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is in many ways very accurate on how domestic violence manifests itself in a relationship. The book is written from the point of view of the abusive party in a teen relationship and it is initially hard to warm to him. However, as you read on and understand his story and share his journey of realisation of what he has become, you can understand him a bit more. It was a well written book on an uncomfortable subject.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
147 reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
A COMPELLING READING OF AN IMPORTANT STORY
24 Jan 2002
Film and Broadway actor Jon Cryer gives compelling reading to this candid story of a teenager apparently fated to visit upon others the physical violence he has endured.
The setting is sunny, affluent South Florida where to his classmates at Biscayne High School 16-tear-old Nick Andreas appears to have it all. His family is well to do; he's a top athlete and student. The person in his lucky-me armor is his father's hair trigger temper.
Caitlin, Nick's girl, is everything he had hoped for - beautiful, gifted and wild about him. That is, until Nick hits her. She seeks a restraining order against him, and he must attend group counseling. He has lost his reputation, his friends, and his girl.
Once in counseling Nick is forced to turn an objective eye on fellow abusers and observe not only the pain they have inflicted upon others but the harm they have done to themselves. He must stand alone to learn responsibility and the true meaning of manhood.
Gratefully, the author is honest and doesn't make Nick's journey an easy one with a made in Hollywood ending.
- Gail Cooke
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Uncomfortable subject handled well
31 Jan 2004
Format:Paperback
It's hard reading a book where the main character is unlikeable, and Nick is most definitely unlikeable. Although the first person narrative makes it a little easier to accept Nick. Flinn has done a good job of not only showing what an abusive relationship is and how it fuels itself (controlling behavior from insecurities preying on someone elses insecurities, reinforced by an I'll do anything if you don't hurt me again response -- to simplify it way too much). But more impressive, she has shown how someone can grow and start to move on -- convincingly. This isn't a "it's for teens so I have to find a silver lining" type ending. Nick has a long way to go at the end of the book. Everything isn't magically better, but there is a plan.
Also Flinn's details, events, background stories of the characters clearly come from her experiences working with people in similar situations. Even her wildest story -- Leo becoming a puppet abuser (i.e. his father is pulling the strings) is very believable, at least to me, because I know someone whose father made him do horrible, abusive things to his sister.
Painful, yet healing book to read, about something that both teens and adults need to be aware of.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Very far from the tree
7 Feb 2004
Format:Paperback
Nick Andreas has just been served a restraining order from the person he loves the most in the world. After beating his girlfriend, the sixteen-year-old offender finds himself attending group therapy and writing in a journal about the things he's done. He's the son of an abuser, and it looks like that abuse has surfaced within himself. The question is, can Nick recognize what he's done? More importantly, can he change?
The premise is a complex one. Author Alex Flinn set out to write about an abusive relationship from the abuser's point of view. Now how do you go about doing that, exactly? How do you write a story in which the reader has to simultaneously empathize with and abhor the protagonist? The fact of the matter is, Flinn is so adept with her writing skills that she gets away with it. The result is phenomenal.
The real strength of this story is the way in which the plot arcs and fools the reader. Nick is hardly a reliable narrator (a fact that becomes painfully clear by the end of the story). Yet when he writes in his journal, he feels unaccountably unable to lie about anything that happened. Flinn slowly brings the plot in the journal, and the story of how Nick lives in the aftermath of his own violence, together by the book's end. She does not compromise her position either. As a woman who served as a lawyer trying domestic violence cases and as a volunteer at the Inn Transition facility for battered women and their kids, she knows from whence she speaks. This isn't an author who is speculating on what violence does to families and friends. She knows. Better still, she can write about it.
This isn't a perfect book, I suppose. Some jumps in the plot are implausible. Some characters inconsistent. But what flaws it has only serve to show how strong the story itself is. There is no book on how abusers feel that is as available and accessible to young adults as "Breathing Underwater". You will never regret having read it.
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