This knotty, labyrinthine tale fails to add up to more than its parts.
A novel about love, desire, loss, and revenge in a small Israeli settlement.
There’s a story Ruta Tavori likes to tell about her family: soon after her grandfather Ze’ev, a young man, came from Galilee to start a new life in a newly settled moshava, his brother arrived in a wagon, bringing for him all the things one needs to start a life: a basalt stone to build a house, “a rifle, a cow, a tree, and a woman.” “This is important,” Ruta says. “You have no idea how many times I heard that story, and always in that order.” The woman at the end of that list became Ze’ev’s wife. The violence that soon takes place between them has far-reaching effects on their immediate family and the surrounding community for generations to come. For Ruta has had a tragedy of her own, and she soon tells it: 12 years ago, her 6-year-old son, on a hike with her husband, was bitten by a snake and died. Ruta tells these stories, which are connected, though it isn’t clear yet how, in overlapping, intertwining chapters that move back and forth in time. She is a chatty, sometimes-sarcastic narrator, and she comments on the role of the storyteller as she goes along. As she says to the historian who has come to interview her, “we of all people know that over time only what is written becomes true, and what is spoken doesn’t.” Shalev (My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner, 2011, etc.), winner of the National Jewish Book Award and Israel’s Brenner Prize, has concocted a layered, circuitous narrative, ample with emotion. The problem is the sculpting and the pacing of that emotion. The book seems to sag beneath its weight. So many fine details are included (inane chatter between Ruta and her historian, for example) that they begin to crowd out the larger—much larger—story. That means that the denouement feels rushed and the emotional resolution unearned. Shalev may be a force to be reckoned with, but his latest work still leaves something wanting.
This knotty, labyrinthine tale fails to add up to more than its parts.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-805-24329-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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
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
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