Almond’s first novel is ambitious and empathic but sometimes unwieldy.
A disappearance brings together a host of disparate lives in early-1980s California.
This novel, Almond’s first, follows a number of acclaimed story collections and works of nonfiction. He’s opted to use the biggest possible canvas, incorporating a diverse cast of characters and a host of weighty themes. The resulting novel is incredibly ambitious while also featuring some unexpected touches—scorpion biology and Nancy Reagan both play significant roles. The bulk of the novel is set in California in 1981. Lorena Saenz, age 13, is partnered with classmate Jenny Stallworth for a science fair project. Lorena is the daughter of an undocumented mother and comes from a working-class background; Jenny’s family, by contrast, is wealthy. More ominously, Jenny’s father, Marcus—a scientist and academic with an interest in scorpions—develops an attraction to Lorena. Almond summons plenty of tension from the question of whether or not Marcus will do something awful—right up until the point when he vanishes under mysterious circumstances and Lorena’s older brother, Tony, becomes a suspect in his disappearance. It’s at this point that Pedro Guerrero, one of the police officers investigating the case, enters the narrative, expanding its scope beyond the two families of the early chapters. Almond is grappling with a lot of weighty themes: Class disparities, sexual abuse, corrupt policing, immigration, and the modern Republican Party (including a couple of references to the Romney family) all play significant parts here. But while the large-scale tragedy that plays out is thought-provoking, the novel’s stranger digressions—like glowing scorpions—are what endure.
Almond’s first novel is ambitious and empathic but sometimes unwieldy.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63893-002-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Zando
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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