Easy Connections

SHORT-LISTED FOR THE YOUNG OBSERVER FICTION PRIZE 1983

About the Book...

'No more exams. No more boring holiday work.  Just two blissful weeks painting in the country - then, art college at last. Just paint, paint, paint!'

Cathy Harlow is a gifted painter. She is seventeen and three glorious years at art college stretch blissfully ahead of her.

But when she meets Paul Devlin, lead guitarist of the rock group Easy Connection and a millionaire superstar her dreams are shattered. Dev is beautiful, brilliant, and explosively violent. Cathy is attracted and repelled in equal measure, but Dev is determined to have her, and Dev usually gets what he wants...

Easy Connections is a powerful and compelling novel, a love story with a difference, set against a vivid background of art school and the larger-than-life world of successful rock stars.'

Editions 

First published 1983 by

Victor Gollancz Ltd. London

ISBN O-575-O3245-6

Reprinted l988.

Cover illustration:  Kathy Wyatt

Paperback Penguin Puffin l984

Reprinted l986

Reprinted Penguin l988

Cover illustration: Kathy Wyatt

First US Edition 1984

The Viking Press, New York

ISBN 0-670-28694-X

Cover illustration: Kathy Wyatt

US Paperback l985

Pacer Books for Young Adults, Berkeley Books, New York

ISBN 0-425-084090-4  

Reviews 

'This is a very readable first novel by an author who has successfully managed to create an authentic, imaginary pop-music world, no mean achievement when one reflects how many established writers have failed to do so.  Cathy Harlow is a brilliant art student, as well as the subject of a very successful pop star's passion...but  Liz Berry is careful to show the difficulties of this kind of success and Cathy emerges as a character determined to live her own life and make her own career.  Her story is also a useful comment on the damage which can be done to individuals by the popular press.'  School Librarian (l983)

'Easy Connections shocked and angered me more than anything I've read for a long time.'  ILEA English Magazine (l985)

'It is some measure of the power of Liz Berry's invention that her book made me so angry.  I wanted to thump her horrible hero and to slap some sense into her intelligent talented heroine...

MsBerry knows the art world at first hand and she understands the problems of young people today.  Her picture of Cathy is moving because here is no Rock-mad youngster but a young woman dedicated to her art and with talent to match her aspirations.  Saddled with an unwanted, but sexually attractive, admirer and an expected baby and betrayed by her own family, she stands up admirably to the pressures, largely because she is too busy working out her artistic problems to give time to considering her personal dilemma.  How the author could bear to let her be defeated by the blatantly selfish and chauvinistic Dev is difficult to comprehend....

Ms Berry puts her heroine into an authentic setting and surrounds her with recognisable fallible companions.  She captures the atmosphere of the student world and the rock scene beautifully, and her description of a rock concert is a piece of virtuoso writing.  How I wish she could have tumbled Dev from his pedestal!'  Junior Bookshelf (l983)