Write Naked » (First Edition)

PETER GOULD is a youth theater director, a physical comedy performer, and a playwright whose works have been performed all over the world. He lives in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Sixteen-year-old Victor, a thoughtful loner who tries to live his life “under the radar,” wants to test out the saying “You have to be naked to write.” When he sneaks off with an old Royal typewriter to his uncle’s cabin deep in the Vermont woods and strips off his clothes, he expects Thoreau-like solitude. What he gets is something else—both funny and, as his high school English teacher likes to say, “transformative.” For he discovers a face in the window watching him—Rose Anna, a homeschooled free spirit with an antique fountain pen and a passion to save the planet. Their unexpected encounter marks the beginning of an inspired writing partnership—and a relationship as timeless and eager as the Vermont woods in spring.

A strikingly original debut novel that introduces two storytellers with different kinds of tales: one—in Victor’s unforgettable voice—a quirky, contemporary love story; the other—by Rose Anna—an ecological fantasy featuring a tiny heroic newt. Together, the teens explore the possibility of connections – to one another, the woods outside, and the world beyond.

Publishers Weekly

Victor, the 16-year-old protagonist of this belletristic first novel, has gone to his uncle's cabin in the Vermont woods to try out an aphorism he's seen, "You have to be naked to write"; there he meets Rose Anna, a home-schooled free spirit and fellow writer who is also 16. The two continue to meet and write together; Rose Anna also lectures him on Wicca and the environment. Their conversations rarely have the feel of genuine dialogue, and their nostalgia for the '60s (when both their mothers lived on communes) gets redundant. Often Victor, while sympathetic, seems overly earnest, as when he feels overwhelmed by Rose Anna's writing and thinks, "I need a metaphor." Rose Anna, meanwhile, is too wise, passionate and free of self-consciousness to be a believable teen character. Her story about global warming takes away from the flow of the narrative, and readers are unlikely to share Victor's high opinion of it. Ages 14-up. (June)

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