Title: Ash Wednesday Author: Ethan Hawke Publisher: Bloomsbury Ethan Hawke's first novel, The Hottest State, was a devastatingly acute piece of relationship destruction that rated it as one of the best novels when it was released five years ago; it was that good I sent it to my then-partner in Argentina, and we split up soon after - something for which I don't hold Hawke responsible, as there was also a Neil Young tape and a book of Dennis Cooper's poems in the package. But it's 2003, Ethan and I are both without lovers, though admittedly my ex will not be starring soon at the nearest multiplex. Ash Wednesday doesn't stray too far from Hawke's first, though it's more of a road trip as Jimmy Heartsock, gone AWOL, embarks on a journey to win back his lover Christy, who just happens to be pregnant. Both characters have pasts that justify how fucked up they are, and as chapters alternate narration, we get a peak into the emotional scapes of the two and how they resolve their issues, including Jimmy's fear of erectile unresponsivity on his wedding night. Hawke can make the mundane marvellous, with phrases like, "Some things suck; they hurt bad. The question is, Do you have the courage to let them?" There's a gripping few pages as Jimmy takes on some 12 year old at basketball for a hundred bucks, and we understand what drives him, some male urge to overcome that gets him into trouble but never allows him to accept responsibilitity as a way out. Christy on the other hand seems torn between the life of loneliness she might live on her own, and her new role as mother of not one but two children who need her care. As you can see, Hawke's no master of gender complexities, but he crafts good arguments, nice sex scenes and believable conversations with blind men on buses. Ash Wednesday then is the work of someone maturing, but not quite there; of a writer beginning to stretch his prose potential, but yet to risk himself to reach the summit.