A graceful story that takes its time to unfold, with much roiling under the surface of the narrative.
Pensive novel, by noted Colombian writer Abad (Oblivion: A Memoir, 2012, etc.), of a rural family torn by conflict and incomprehension.
Pilar lives on La Oculta, her family’s farm in Antioquia, the mountainous Colombian province. She is, she declares, uninterested in the past: not her family’s, not that of the people who carved these farms out of the jungle, not that of the revolutionary movement that has torn the land in civil war. “That’s nothing to do with me,” she declares in a moment of anti–Marquez-ian repudiation. Still, as Abad’s novel opens, the past is laid out before Pilar, her sister, Eva, and her brother, Antonio, whom Eva summons with the bad news from Pilar that their mother has died. Antonio has long since left the countryside for New York, where he plays on the B team of the orchestra, gives violin lessons, and writes old-fashioned formal poems; his American lover, Jon, has formed a deep affection for La Oculta, and now the siblings struggle with what to do with it. Pilar wants to keep it, and so does Antonio, but something dark happened there, so much so that Eva wants nothing to do with her ancestral place. Abad slowly reveals what that is while differentiating the three, who share resemblances while being very different people who, deep into adulthood, have drifted very far apart. Abad studs his novel with sharply drawn aperçus: “Beauty is like a prison sentence: it opens all doors to you and then closes them,” says the ascetic Pilar, while Antonio, who professes to love each sister equally, muses on the many ways they have rebelled against the past: “It’s impossible to dictate rules that contradict human nature,” he resolves, even as Pilar invents new rules to chase away chaos and the world-weary Eva transgresses them—and even as La Oculta becomes a very different place from the one they knew.
A graceful story that takes its time to unfold, with much roiling under the surface of the narrative.Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-914671-92-3
Page Count: 375
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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