The novel hits its share of false or clumsy notes, but it's not ruined by them thanks to Rash's sure evocation of the time...
The latest from prolific poet and fiction writer Rash, a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award finalist for Serena, provides a damaged man's look back at a long-ago and haunted past.
It's 1969. Eugene and his older brother, Bill, who live with their mother and their tyrannical town-doctor grandfather in a small town in western North Carolina, are spending a summer afternoon at their remote fishing hole when they encounter a sylphlike young woman—a "mermaid," she says—who introduces herself as Ligeia. She's from Florida and has been banished to this backwater after a misadventure in a commune, to live with a preacher uncle and his family. She is a miracle of exoticism, an in-this-place unprecedented representative of hippiedom, and the boys immediately sign up for training in free love. The more ambitious and dutiful brother, Bill, already well on his way to the medical career his grandfather has ordained for him, quickly pulls back, but his more impulsive younger brother, smitten, falls into an extended summer romance with Ligeia (to whom he supplies stolen sample packs of the downers she prefers) and embarks in earnest on what will be a more enduring relationship with drink. Flash-forward 46 years: Bill has fulfilled his destiny and become a celebrated surgeon, while Eugene, who once dabbled promisingly with writing, has given it up and devoted himself full-time to alcohol and self-loathing. He lives in exile from his family, having scarred and nearly killed his daughter in a booze-caused crash, and he and Bill are only rarely and tensely in touch. But when a skeleton is found, spilled into the creek after decades shrouded in a blue tarp, the two brothers are forced to wrangle again with each other and with the events of that fateful summer.
The novel hits its share of false or clumsy notes, but it's not ruined by them thanks to Rash's sure evocation of the time and place and the complexity and poignancy of his portrait of his protagonist.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-062-43631-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
