A wonderfully claustrophobic tale of obsession and self-delusion.
In Hanson’s debut novel, a lifelong Hollywood obsessive hires a duplicitous caregiver.
Dorothy Anderson was a sickly child from a religious family who found solace in movie theaters. She moved out to Hollywood in the mid-1940s and married into the prominent Fiske family, who set her up with a house in the Pacific Palisades and provided access to some of Dorothy’s idols, including Judy Garland. Now, in 2006, the widowed, childless Dorothy is 83 and more than a little obsessed with her neighbor—the actress Angela Lansbury. Dorothy hires Ruth, a caregiver, to help her around the house. The woman comes on the recommendation of Dorothy’s sister-in-law, Esther Fiske, but neither of them know too much about the 60-something Ruth, who isn’t actually licensed as a caregiver. Ruth was raised in foster care, knows how to manipulate people, and often thinks things like, “Humans are just meat.” She happens to already know all the details of Dorothy’s history. The two women quickly become enmeshed in each other’s lives, each attempting to discover the other’s secrets while keeping their own. But how long will it take until an unhealthy obsession becomes a truly dangerous one? The author excels at acclimating the reader to the logic of her characters, which is effectively deployed for moments of both repulsion and humor. Here Dorothy and Ruth run into Angela Lansbury in the grocery store: “Angela’s cart contained a neat pile of fresh vegetables. Crusty bread peeked out like an advertisement for healthy eating. Dorothy moved around to the front of her own cart, trying to hide the two family-size boxes of corn dogs. Dorothy pushed the cart toward Ruth. ‘My assistant takes care of my cart.’ ” Hanson deftly conveys how celebrity fandom becomes its own sort of grotesquerie for all involved; the twists are many and fun, but there’s a real darkness here that sticks with the reader after the book is finished.
A wonderfully claustrophobic tale of obsession and self-delusion.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9798988287407
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Slippery Fish Press
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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