A well-formed coming-of-age story, both erotic and chilling.
A young gay writer’s dream relationship turns into an abusive nightmare.
Parks-Ramage’s emotionally complex debut is narrated by Jonah, a young New Yorker determined to forget his oppressive, conservative upbringing. As Jonah was growing up in suburban Illinois, his pastor father forced him into gay conversion therapy, which only motivated him to escape the Midwest. But Gotham has left him broke and stalled his post–MFA dreams of becoming a playwright. Lonely, needy, and a touch scheming, he insinuates himself with Richard, a wealthy and accomplished gay playwright. Richard draws Jonah into his inner circle, inviting him for a stay at his Hamptons compound. It soon becomes clear, though, that Jonah is just one of numerous handsome and exploitable young men Richard has deceitfully roped into a form of indentured servitude; humiliations abound, from violent, bullying rages to drug-induced rape. When Richard is finally brought to trial, as we learn in the prologue, Jonah is too frightened to follow through on his plan to testify against him. It seems at first that Parks-Ramage has given the plot away early, but the closing chapters deepen the story, not just about Richard, but about Jonah’s struggle to deal with multiple betrayals and abuses along with his callowness. The novel’s title most directly refers to Jonah and Richard’s sub-dom relationship, but it’s also concerned with multiple father figures and their power dynamics, including Jonah’s father and God. Jonah’s first-person narration gives the book a confessional feel while his shifts to second person, addressing another of Richard’s victims, add a note of regret and complicity. “The things we worship eat us alive,” Richard says at one point, and the novel smartly showcases just how corrosive idolatry is.
A well-formed coming-of-age story, both erotic and chilling.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-358-44771-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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