by Jean Thompson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 31, 2016
An overly domesticated marriage-gone-bad story.
A woman discovers her husband is having an affair with her old college roommate. Can this marriage—kids, depression, and all—be saved?
In college, Jane was the timid, unassertive type while Bonnie was the sarcastic extrovert with an affinity for bad-news men. An opposites-attract dynamic made them fast friends—they bonded immediately after Jane’s dispiriting loss of her virginity at a frat party. In adulthood, though, things are complicated. Bonnie uses her quick wit as a crisis intervention counselor for the Chicago Police, but her best romantic prospect is a bartender with a coke habit. Jane is married to a doctor, Eric, and has a son and another baby on the way, but she’s going off the rails emotionally, experiencing rapturous mental breaks (“oh lovely pure nothing”) that may be epilepsy or, she thinks, a curious capacity for premonition. Either way, Jane’s baffling suicide attempt pushes Eric and Bonnie into each other’s arms and prompts Jane to wonder if such an arrangement might actually be good for the marriage. Thompson (The Witch, 2014, etc.) works to elevate this story beyond its familiar infidelity-in-the-burbs setup by avoiding pat moral judgments; she’s more concerned with the dynamics that prompt affairs than thundering about consequences. And both Jane and Bonnie are well-crafted characters, reflecting Thompson’s consistent knack for capturing the emotional seas within seemingly conventional middle-class Midwesterners. (She’s also excellent at depicting children, so often an afterthought in such novels.) But Thompson seems at a loss to figure out what to do with the characters after Jane’s breakdown; Jane makes an unpersuasive and contrived romantic decision as Thompson abandons the more mystical element of Jane’s mindset and her odd musings “about the death of the self and the all-encompassing spirit.” Good for her, but less good for a novel that slackens into familiarity.
An overly domesticated marriage-gone-bad story.Pub Date: May 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-57381-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2018
A tour de force.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
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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