Gorgeous writing throughout makes for an unusually affecting and memorable debut.
A legacy of guilt and secrecy unhinges a hardworking woman doctor’s marriage and psyche, in this accomplished debut by Oregon playwright and filmmaker Emmons.
A prologue introduces young Californian “Cady” (Cadence) Miller and her younger brother Varney, who even at four years old is a seething bundle of potentially violent energies. The narrative then leaps ahead to the novel’s present, in which Cady, having changed her name and (she believes) escaped her past, is now emergency room physician Jana Miller, living in Oregon, happily married to freelance carpenter Cooper Johansen, and the mother of volatile six-year-old Evan. When Evan’s accumulating misbehavior suggests a latent sociopathic streak, Jana’s fragmented memories of her youth cohere, and we gradually learn that Varney, from whom she has long been estranged, had committed a horrific crime, been sentenced to life in prison, and is now dying of AIDS. The tensions thus built up in Jana also estrange her from Cooper (who has never been told that Varney exists, or of his wife’s other life) and Evan. In a desperate, reluctant pilgrimage to Varney’s bedside (in a prison hospice ward), Jana finds both a retreat from her own duplicity and cowardice, and a courageous grasp at the possibility of healing. As the publisher acknowledges, this is Sue Miller and Jane Hamilton territory. Emmons enters it with considerable flair, dramatizing Jana’s yearning for security in her devotion to the precision of medical science, while also rendering with acute specificity the tactics Jana employs to live with her own failings and rescue Evan from what she fears is his inevitable future. Emmons also sustains a mood of impending menace with great skill, finding numerous superbly suggestive metaphors (as Jana retreats during an argument with Cooper, “His voice pummels her back”; a dying patient’s “breath crackles with the . . . unpredictability of a package being unwrapped”).
Gorgeous writing throughout makes for an unusually affecting and memorable debut.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-15-100734-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© 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.
