In pristine, elegant prose, Miller creates an indelible portrait of a mysterious woman and her tragic quest.
The fantastic voyage of a haunted woman.
In the opening scene of Miller’s (Pure, 2012, etc.) graceful, absorbing novel, Maud Stamp and Tim Rathbone, members of their university’s sailing club, are at work repairing a boat when suddenly Maud falls 20 feet onto “rubbled brick” and, although at first she appears dead, opens her eyes, gets up, and walks 15 steps before collapsing. Tim—“tall, blue-eyed, patrician”—shocked that she is alive, rushes her to a hospital and, in short order, becomes her lover. He's fascinated by this self-possessed woman who lives in Spartan rooms, who “does not do banter,” who (like Miller’s protagonist in 1997's Ingenious Pain) seems not to suffer, or even to feel, pain, and who has on her forearm a tattoo, Sauve Qui Peut: every man for himself. The lovers seem complete opposites: after earning a degree in biology, Maud takes a position at a pharmaceutical company, assigned, ironically, to oversee trials of a powerful painkiller. Tim, born into wealth and privilege—Miller delightedly skewers his family’s pretensions and hypocrisies—occupies himself by playing one of his precious collectible guitars; after their daughter is born, he happily becomes a stay-at-home dad. But Tim feels increasingly frustrated with Maud’s coldness, her apparent distance from him and their child. Who is this woman, he wonders, who “entered his life with the force of myth”? Maud is, indeed, a cipher: is she a stereotypical scientist, focused on chemical rather than human interactions? Does she have Asperger’s? Or is she hiding some deep, unspeakable grief, a more likely possibility that emerges in the second half of the novel, when she flees from a devastating tragedy to sail across the Atlantic, alone. In palpable detail, Miller depicts Maud’s immersion in a watery, ravaging world, at once alien and threatening. There is something Shakespearean in her journey: in her battle against nature’s wrath; the dreamlike settlement, inhabited by children, where she washes ashore; and her overwhelming desire to confront the unbearable.
In pristine, elegant prose, Miller creates an indelible portrait of a mysterious woman and her tragic quest.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60945-347-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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