Soodak’s first novel, about an affluent New York mom and her rocky relationship with her own mother, considers several mother-daughter parallels.
Kara, born out of wedlock to a talented songstress and a brilliant composer, found life with her mother difficult. Her mom was both gorgeous and boozy, and treated her more like a girlfriend than daughter. Kara ached to leave her small town in Ohio behind and migrated to New York City, which held the key to everything she wanted in life. Of course, the thing she wanted most of all was Oliver, a rising young star in the art world; but a lasting relationship with Oliver wasn’t possible, and Kara soon finds herself recast as a mother, wife and businesswoman. Told partially in flashbacks that take Kara back to her childhood with her temperamental mother and her college days with the careless and sometimes emotionally cruel Oliver, the book opens with Kara finding the now-famous Oliver’s paintings exhibited in a nearby gallery. Married to a successful businessman, Michael, and the mother of three, Kara partners in a children’s hair salon, employs a nanny who lives in the couple’s small studio apartment next door to their place and befriends novelist Morgan, who cheats on her husband with a stranger. While Kara explores her mother issues and deals with nanny problems from her perch high in an expensive building, she gradually becomes aware that her daughter, Henny, is having problems at school. Set against the backdrop of the Big Apple, which Kara clearly loves, the book examines Kara’s life of pedicures, lattes and play dates in writing that flows. In the end, though, the most interesting parts of the book aren’t set in Kara’s present, in which she comes off as shallow and self-indulgent, but in her past, dealing with her drunken mother and crush on a man who was, at best, self-serving. Although Soodak’s portrait of a privileged upper-class New York mom rings true, once Kara crosses from college student to frazzled yuppie she ceases to be interesting and sympathetic.
Pub Date: April 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-446-57426-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: 5 Spot/Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
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
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