Although the plot does not weather close scrutiny, this is an unsettling, insomnia-inducing read.
Two women, tried as teens for the murder of their teacher, confront their past and each other.
A tabloid photo of 18-year-old Serena and 16-year-old Poppy, pictured wearing string bikinis and holding ice-cream cones, leads the London press to dub them the Ice Cream Girls. After their former teacher, Marcus, was found stabbed through the heart, each girl denied administering the coup de grâce. The sensationalist press coverage portrayed the teens as sociopaths and Marcus as a saint. The jury believed Serena but convicted Poppy. Twenty years later, Poppy is paroled from prison, and returns to her parents’ home in Brighton, where the welcome is decidedly frosty. Serena, also a resident of Brighton, has a professional career, is married to mild-mannered physician Evan and has two children. Through flashbacks, we learn that—unbeknownst to their parents—Marcus seduced both girls when they were underage, then embroiled them in a depraved ménage à trois. Each suffered beatings, emotional abuse and repeated rapes. Serena’s outwardly calm domestic life imperfectly masks her post-traumatic stress—she hides the kitchen knives every night and cannot bring herself to reveal her past to Evan. Poppy emerges from prison with only one goal in mind: force Serena to admit that she was the one who fatally stabbed Marcus, not Poppy. Threatening to expose her to Evan, Poppy tries to coerce a confession, however Serena claims that she cannot recall how Marcus was killed or by whom. It stretches credulity that two girls from relatively privileged homes could not escape this predator especially since, when they’re not enduring his atrocities, they are living at home with their parents. The accretion of details of these horrors certainly imparts a credible motive for murder. However, the question remains, who actually killed Marcus? The solution to this puzzle is unexpected, largely because Koomson elects to gloss over the details of the murder investigation and trial.
Although the plot does not weather close scrutiny, this is an unsettling, insomnia-inducing read.Pub Date: April 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4555-0713-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
