An unnerving but memorable tale that leaves myriad lingering questions for a prospective sequel.
A move from the city to a new home in the snowy mountains becomes a fight for survival for an Oregon family in this thriller.
Seventeen years of hard work at the tech company Portland Micro has earned Ken Carroll a sabbatical. For his four months of paid vacation, he and his family move to their newly constructed home on Cedar Mountain. It’s especially taxing for Ken’s wife, Amanda, who will miss her city restaurants and yoga classes. But twin teens Kristi and Reed have an easier time adjusting. Olympic hopeful Kristi excels at nearly every sport, but she has plenty of space in the mountains to focus on cross-country skiing, marksmanship, and fencing. And though nerdish Reed would have preferred staying in public school with proximity to female peers, he has ready access to a cherished online game, “Mythykal.” Unfortunately, a blizzard hits, seemingly stranding Amanda in the storm, while danger lurks for the others at home. Wolves in the area often have their eyes firmly on the human “intruders,” and Reed should probably avoid following the Hispanic girl he continually sees in the nearby woods. An attack of some kind is imminent, forcing the Carrolls into a violent confrontation. Much of Zell’s (Running Cold, 2017, etc.) novel thrives on retaining an aura of mystery. Amanda’s fate, for one, isn’t immediately revealed, and there’s a definite menace in the forest, exemplified by unmistakable leeriness from the family’s chocolate Lab, Dog. The author often works this to great effect; in a chilling scene, Reed spots something in an icy creek that apparently rolls over (presumably for a better look at him). Alternating perspectives expand the narrative, eventually including Cedar locals like the sheriff. The twins, however, are the standouts: Kristi displays her prowess in the feverish denouement while Reed, about halfway through, commits an act that will shatter much reader sympathy. But that’s the story’s essence: shocking turns in abundance and generally disturbing.
An unnerving but memorable tale that leaves myriad lingering questions for a prospective sequel.Pub Date: June 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9847468-4-2
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Tales From Zell, Incorporated
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
© Copyright 2025 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.
