Overly familiar debut melodrama somewhat redeemed by one fresh theme, the use of art therapy to overcome childhood mutism. Two poles of mental illness hold this novel in balance: the study of a sexual psychopath, and of the elective mutism he’s driven his stepson into through sexual abuse. Chet Boyce marries Davy’s plain-faced mother to get at seven-year-old Davy. When Davy tells her that his new stepfather has been hurting him “down there” and she confronts Chet, Chet kills her with a straight razor in front of Davy, then buries her, and takes Davy with him in a trailer to the far Oregon timberland town of Bentman. Chet, it turns out, is a serial murderer who marries and kills widows with sons. His threats have caused Davy to go mute, even around their trailer, which is parked in the woods. Not surprisingly, the boy does poorly in school, and so is later transferred to the Bentman Children’s Center for psychological study, where he ends up in Celia Griswold’s art therapy class. Two subthemes about cruelty to animals glance off the main storyline: Hunters kill deer illegally on the Griswolds’ country property, and a retarded shepherd begins grazing his flock near their home. Meanwhile, Celia gets Davy to turn out endless drawings for her—which are nearly always of Batman with his crotch heavily blackened. Celia considers this a likely indication of child abuse, and her chats with Chet only strengthen her suspicions. We follow Chet as he sneaks into Celia’s home while she’s away. At the same time, Celia’s husband Jack is having an affair with his secretary at the insurance agency he runs. When he and his lover go off for a weekend, Celia is left alone in the woods, and Chet’s fiendish schemes begin, with murder the lighter side of his joys. Chet’s grim illness is ghastly, but the plot twists and climax are unsurprising, reducing this to a standard-issue thriller.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18051-9
Page Count: 294
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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