Robert Cormier is one of the best known writers of teenage fiction and has been compared to J.D. Salinger and William Golding. His novels are often brutal and always uncompromising; the good guys do not always come out on top. Cormier is especially concerned with corruption, victimization, betrayal and conspiracy.

THE BASICS
Born Leominster, Massachusetts, January 17th 1925
Died 2000
Jobs Writer of radio commercials, Journalist
Lives Leominster, Massachusetts
First Book for Young People The Chocolate War, 1974

THE BOOKS
When he was twelve, Robert Cormier's teacher, a nun, read a poem by him and declared "Robert, you're a writer." Robert began his professional writing career scripting radio commercials. He went on to become a newspaper journalist for 31 years, winning three major journalism awards. Robert credits both journalism and writing commercials as helping him to achieve his characteristic economy of style. His first work of fiction - a novel for adults - was published in 1963, but it was with the groundbreaking The Chocolate War in 1974 that Robert became a full-time writer. A gentle, caring, family-orientated man, who still lives in the town where he was born, Robert is concerned about the problems facing young people in modern society. This concern is reflected in his novels, which are often brutal and always uncompromising in their depiction of the individual struggling in the face of power, corruption, victimization, betrayal and conspiracy. Tenderness, for example, depicts the relationship between a teenage runaway and a juvenile serial killer. In Heroes, a teenage war hero and victim returns to confront the idolized youth leader who betrayed him. One of Robert's favourite books is Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, so it must have been particularly gratifying for him to read in Newsweek that "if any author in the field can challenge J.D. Salinger or William Golding it is Robert Cormier."

WHAT HE SAYS..."I'm very much interested in intimidation. And the way people manipulate other people. And the obvious abuse of authority."

"I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper."

"Newspaper writing did teach me an economy in writing. I always loved tight writing. When I rewrite, I cross out words and simplify. I go for the simple word. Reporting taught me that."

"I've always felt that you can have the greatest writing in the world and a terrific plot, but if your characters don't come alive, and if your reader doesn't either love them or hate them or just identify with them in some way, then everything else won't work... I try to create real characters and I think that's the key probably to my writing."

"There is a tendency for all of us to want happy endings and to have the good guy win at the end and have the lovers stroll off into the sunset, particularly if they're teenagers. I try to follow the sense of inevitability that I create in my books and that often upsets people. If that happens and the books become controversial that’s fine with me."

"Ideas are everywhere, easy to find and develop into stories. But the idea that works for me must be linked to an emotion. In fact, the emotion comes first. Something happens that affects me emotionally, and sends me to the typewriter where I devise a character and set the plot in motion. This never varies: emotion, character, plot."

"I write in the middle of chaos. It doesn't matter to me. I don't need solitude or seclusion to write."

WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT ROBERT CORMIER..."If any author in the field can challenge J.D. Salinger or William Golding it is Robert Cormier."
Newsweek

"A very accomplished writer."
Sunday Telegraph

"Robert Cormier writes elegant, pared-down prose, but his stories are complex and full of emotion, and they deal with difficult subjects."
Adele Geras, TES

"A psychological thriller... written in crackling prose."
Newsweek on After the First Death

"Compulsive."
Observer on After the First Death

"A brilliant, brutal, uncompromising story about power and corruption."
Daily Telegraph on The Chocolate War

"A tour-de-force of fantasy writing."
TES on Fade

"Cormier has once again produced a profoundly disturbing, finely crafted gem that's hard, cold, and brilliant."
Kirkus Reviews on Fade

"Cormier's prose has never been more carefully modulated... and, as ever in Cormier, the reader is made to suffer with the main character under a tightening psychological vice."
The Scotsman on Heroes

"Cormier is once again on top of his game, as he constructs intrigue, develops characters and creates an unexpected climax. His story, as dark as any he has written thus far, will hold fans from first page to last, and set them thinking about what really lurks behind the face of a hero."
Publishers Weekly on Heroes

"A stunning novel, undeniably compulsive to the last line on the last page."
Sunday Times on I Am The Cheese

"Still way ahead of most thrillers for teenagers."
TES on I Am The Cheese

"For something mind-clinging and mind-chilling, I Am The Cheese takes the prize."
New Statesman

"A novel you are unlikely to forget."
TES on The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

"Eloquently written and affecting."
John Knowles, New York Times Book Review on The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

"Cormier shapes a narrative which, in its sheer power to hold a reader's attention, is tinglingly skilful. It has, additionally, the merit of provoking questions about crime and responsibility, motive and manipulation, which threaten to dislodge even our most apparently secure assumptions."
Books for Keeps on Tenderness

"A daring exploration of adolescent obsession and depravity, (Tenderness) demonstrates how sophisticated and thematically ambitious novels for teenagers have become." The Scotsman

"Vintage Cormier... the text (takes) the reader along startling paths."
The Horn Book Magazine on Tenderness

AWARDSShortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for In The Middle of the Night
Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Heroes

Robert Cormier 1925-2000

Last updated: May 2001