A subtle exploration of loss.
A modern-day Three Wise Monkeys, Al-Mohaimeed’s novel, banned in Saudi Arabia, concerns a trio of disabled Saudis who accidentally converge in Riyadh and tell their stories. This is the author’s first book-length U.S. publication.
Turad, a Bedouin missing an ear, waits in a Riyadh bus station not knowing where he is going, but only that he must escape his current “hell,” perhaps find a hell of a different name. He recalls, in spurts, the details of his life—his father’s grief when his older brother ran away with a gypsy girl, his foray into highway robbery to bring money home to his family, his shame about his ear and his stilted, humiliating career as a servant in a ministry office. While half-heartedly trying to decide upon a destination, he discovers an old government file that someone has left, which chronicles in legal terms the life of another misfit, a young man orphaned and mutilated as an infant, leaving him with one eye. The baby, who received the government-issued name Nasir, was placed in an orphanage, where he was arguably sexually abused by a Filipino caretaker, before being rejected by the armed forces. Nasir’s story stirs Turad’s memory, and he recalls the stories of a former colleague, a Sudanese man named Amm Tawfiq, who had once been a driver for the palace and spoke of Nasir. Like Turad and Nasir, Amm Tawfiq is also missing something essential—as a younger man, he was tricked by a group of slave traders, and after a long and arduous journey with them, was viciously raped and castrated. Seemingly the most life-altering of the three wounds, the castration appears to affect Amm Tawfiq less profoundly than the other two are affected by their traumas. In each case, though, mutilation becomes an effective frame for conveying the characters’ collective pain and solitude.
A subtle exploration of loss.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-14-311321-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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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