Boldly imagined scenarios, disappointing payoffs.
A collection of odd tales by the author of Bird Box (2014) and other books.
Returning to his made-up city of Samhattan, Michigan, Malerman offers five stories about pitiable lost souls. In “Doug and Judy Buy the House Washer™,” a bickering couple of considerable wealth tries out “the most luxurious item on the market,” shutting themselves inside a large glass tube in their living room as the house and all its contents are submerged in miracle cleaning goop. As revealing letters and other secret items swoosh up against the glass, they contest their troubled past—and, unable to shut off the machine, panic over their immediate future. In “The Jupiter Drop,” a rich man estranged from his family confronts his sad existence on an “interstellar thrill ride” that has him free-fall through Jupiter’s stormy atmosphere inside a luxury apartment with transparent walls and a “virtual mom.” “Half the House Is Haunted” charts the long-term psychological effects of an 8-year-old girl’s ceaseless efforts to scare her 6-year-old brother in their creepy home. In “Egorov,” the best of the stories, set around the turn of the 20th century in Samhattan’s Little Russia, two identical 24-year-old triplets use their ghostly presences to find the murderer of their brother. And in “Argyle,” a dying man celebrates getting through his life without acting on his murderous desires. “Is there any greater sign of a father's love than not drowning his children in the tub?” Malerman never runs out of wild premises or the knack for ridiculing the human condition à la Mad magazine. But these long stories reveal his tendency to drive his concepts into the ground. Most of them go on and on before petering out without a satisfying conclusion.
Boldly imagined scenarios, disappointing payoffs.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9780593237861
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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
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