An extremely dark exploration of serial killing. Even an admirable final girl can’t balance the ick.
Wright explores the ravages of psychopathy on society through the lives of two young killers.
The Zanetti twins, Benjamin and Corinthia, are marked by violence from an early age, witnesses to their father committing a brutal murder. Both disgusted and fascinated by this traumatic event, they begin to take out a latent propensity for violence on animals. When Corinthia threatens to escalate by killing their younger brother, Ben intervenes and Corinthia is gravely hurt, which spurs their mentally ill mother to begin locking Ben in the basement. Ben and Corinthia eventually run away to live with their wealthy grandmother, whose kindness is not enough to undo years of abuse and erratic behavior. When she dies, it doesn’t take long for them to go hunting female students from the local university, abducting and killing them. Several years later, a strong, savvy Black final girl–type named Amanda Taylor puts the pieces together to save her roommate, identifying the perpetrators of the string of murders. Only, this is not the full story. Wright throws in a pretty sharp twist about two-thirds of the way through the novel (and a less successful one at the end), but by that point, having spent so much time in the damaged lives and psyches of Corinthia and Ben has taken a toll. This book is a lot. It’s unflinching, but the violence is graphic and the psychoses incredibly disturbing. The writing is also uneven; there are almost comedic moments—“Ben saw red—and not just blood, either”—that clash with unwieldy sentences like this: “Equal parts sweet and short-tempered, Amanda was a walking paradox who always smiled before narrowing her dark brown eyes when she was angry.” There’s nothing wrong with variety, but this speaks to a larger unevenness in the novel’s style. It’s hard to tell, in the end, whether we are being asked to sympathize with the twins—and if we can, what does that expose about us?
An extremely dark exploration of serial killing. Even an admirable final girl can’t balance the ick.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781636281568
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.
Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back—but all, of course, is not what it seems.
Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails—first his book lands on the New York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby’s godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady’s experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he’s not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who’s a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident—and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby’s disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book’s slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story.
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781250337788
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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