A cerebral and inventive tale exploring the power of the subconscious.
In this debut gothic novel, a woman attempts to discover the meaning of her dreams.
Lynn is fascinated by her dreams, though her engineer fiance, Mike, is quick to dismiss them: “Dreams are just your brain sorting through irrelevancies, determining what goes in which folder, what gets tossed.” Because of his skepticism, she doesn’t bother to tell him when she dreams of him dying in a flash of splinters and glass. Then, the next day, Mike is killed in a car accident. Despite her training—Lynn is a therapist at a mental health clinic—she can’t get over her sense of grief, even after a year passes. A friend recommends she attend a retreat at the House of Sleep, a Victorian mansion that serves as a center for dream remembrance and interpretation. It is run by a guru known as DM, the Diving Man, a figure with a mysterious past who possesses a secret government drug called the One that serves as the basis for his treatment. There, Lynn becomes one of his Sleepers, as the community of monklike students is known. It is also there that she meets Daniel, a haunted young man in whom Lynn—and DM—quickly takes an interest. Lynn and Daniel have an unexpected connection: He may be just the person she needs to finally put her sorrow to bed. But first they may have to contend with whatever it is that DM has planned for them. Kelly’s prose is wonderfully moody, as here when Daniel comes to after an attempted exorcism by his Christian father: “Daniel did wake up—gradually, out of vaporous, ghostly dreams about dying—and lay awhile collecting evidence that night had come. His face was stiff and swollen with water—the best and failed effort of his father’s god to oust the demon.” The author succeeds in creating a creepy, paranoid atmosphere in which readers will often be left to wonder just what is true, what is false, and what is dangerous. DM is a captivating villain, though at times his monologues border on camp. There are moments when the plot drags, and the book is perhaps 50 pages longer than it should be. Even so, Kelly has created an indisputably original—and mind-bending—story using some classic gothic elements.
A cerebral and inventive tale exploring the power of the subconscious.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8-59-312863-8
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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