A promising but uneven debut that walks the line between speculative fiction and ghost story.
Students accepted to the mysterious and prestigious Catherine House agree to give up contact with the outside world for three years in exchange for unimaginable power and influence.
Ines arrives at Catherine House because she has nowhere else to go. After months spent partying, she has barely graduated high school. "I was staying out late, swallowing magic pills, and laughing so hard I threw up," she recalls. Burdened by a deeply traumatic memory, Ines sees the isolation of Catherine House as a way to insulate herself from the consequences of the real world. But Ines quickly realizes that she doesn't fit in at Catherine House either. She lacks the motivation that drives other Catherine students, like her quiet, focused roommate, Baby, who desperately wants to be accepted to the "new materials" concentration. The highly competitive department attracts the school's best and brightest students as well as the bulk of its funding. But what do new materials students actually study in the laboratories of Catherine House's basement? And why are all students asked to take part in cultlike meditative sessions that seem to bind their identities to the school? Thomas' debut borrows from the grand tradition of the gothic, exchanging ghosts for dubious scientific experimentation and excavating how figures of power and privilege manipulate disadvantaged students to their own benefit. Thomas is at her best when she cracks open the conventions of elite spaces and turns them on their heads. Instead of a whitewashed institution with token diversity, Catherine House brims with sexually fluid teens from all walks of life. And despite Catherine House's reputation, the school crumbles from the inside out. Because Ines has experienced so much trauma, however, she's often disconnected and distant from the characters and events that propel the plot forward. Even her curiosity and ability to explore Catherine's depths are tamped down by depression and fear. This results in muted, lyrical observations about what it feels like to be in "the house...in the woods," but it also means the reader only learns as much as Ines herself can see and process. In the end, we're shut out of the mysteries of Catherine House, too.
A promising but uneven debut that walks the line between speculative fiction and ghost story.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-290565-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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