An unsparing account of “rich people problems” that goes on forever, like all the best nightmares.
Reinard’s novel plunges a perfect family into a horrible situation whose horrors steadily deepen.
Having attended Carnegie Mellon University on a scholarship because her father, Victor Denning, was head of campus maintenance there, Sarah Ellsworth has landed in the lap of luxury, married to the younger son of wealthy, well-connected William Ellsworth and installed in the house she’s called Stonehenge ever since she and her father used to drive past it years ago. A phone call from her teenage son, Finn, threatens to bring it all crashing down. Following Finn’s iPhone location when he’s unable to tell them where he is, Sarah and Martin Ellsworth, the whiz-kid CEO of a robotics startup, find him in the woods along with the body of Yazmin Veltri, his girlfriend from the other side of the tracks. She’s been bashed to death, and Finn is the overwhelmingly obvious suspect. The Ellsworths swiftly close ranks to contain the threat, cleaning up the evidence implicating Finn and rehearsing him in a story that contains just enough facts to be plausible. Sarah, at once desperate to protect her son and sickened that she’s falling in so easily with the coverup planned by her husband’s family, is still further distressed by a meeting with Yazmin’s mother, Alisha, who demands the return of a tell-all journal her daughter had been keeping. Martin’s cousin Alton Pembroke, the sheriff in charge of the case, says he doesn’t have it. Sarah’s search leads her to Yazmin’s music teacher, Joshua Louden, who just happens to be Sarah’s first love from the days when his own family lived in Stonehenge.
An unsparing account of “rich people problems” that goes on forever, like all the best nightmares.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2493-8
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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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