Skyler, Heather

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SKYLER, Heather

PERSONAL: Born in Las Vegas, NV; married; children: one son, one daughter. Education: University of Washington, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—Madison, WI. Offıce—Beloit College, 635 College, 2nd Floor, Number 3, Beloit, WI 53511.

CAREER: Beloit College, Beloit, WI, instructor in fiction writing. Beloit Fiction Journal, managing editor.

WRITINGS:

The Perfect Age, W. W. Norton & Co. (New York,

NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Heather Skyler's first novel, The Perfect Age recounts the "beautifully wrought coming-of-age story" of Helen Larkin, commented Library Journal reviewer Eleanor J. Bader. Over the course of three summers as a pool lifeguard in Las Vegas, Helen matures from an awkward and confused fifteen year old to a confident and self-aware eighteen year old. Summer acts as "the cauldron from which a family is shaped and reshaped, changing their dynamic in unexpected ways," noted Luan Gaines on the Curled up with a Good Book Web site. As a fifteen-year-old with her job as a lifeguard at the Dunes hotel, Helen dreams of her first boyfriend, Leo, a band drummer who comes from a financially struggling and divorce-scarred family. As the two move toward a more intimate relationship, Helen has to deal with the possibility that her mother, Kathy, is having an affair with the pool manager, Gerard. "Suddenly aware of her parents' marriage, Helen senses the subtle intrusions of the world into daily life, both exhilarated and angered by her inability to understand or control events," stated Gaines.

In the second summer, Helen and Kathy are deeply involved in the complications of their sexual activities and must confront the physical, moral, and psychological implications of their decisions. As Helen's feelings toward Leo shift, she has relationships with other lifeguards, wondering almost casually if she is really cheating on Leo, and if anyone is actually hurt if no one finds out. Meanwhile, Kathy's affair with Gerard intensifies, causing conflict between her and Helen—she firmly denies the affair when confronted by Helen, even as her husband, Edward, stoically endures what he knows to be true. In the third summer, Gerard demands that Kathy choose between him and Edward. College-bound Helen and Leo decide that their relationship is at an end as the attractions of real life and maturation appeal to them both.

Skyler "sensitively explores family dynamics, particularly the line between privacy and secrecy," observed a Kirkus Reviews critic, while Bader called The Perfect Age "rich, smart, and nuanced." A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that, in a "sultry, reflective debut novel," Skyler "perfectly captures the languid heat of long Las Vegas summers and the irresistible temptations of love at any age." The book's "characters are revealed in neatly crafted vignettes that concentrate quite well on quiet epiphanies rising from interpersonal friction," commented John Ziebell in Las Vegas Mercury. In the end, Ziebell concluded, the story "unfolds very simply to remind us how inadequate we all felt, should we choose to admit it, when first faced with the incomprehensibility of the adult world closing in around us."