A nuanced, memorable book that draws no facile conclusions.
Myslik-McFadden’s novel tells an inventive tale of death and transformation.
Much of the narrative is a book within a book, written by the protagonist, Maria. Maria flies to Georgia to visit her mother, who is on her deathbed. The two have been distant, if not estranged, and Maria has never met her half sister, Gwen. It’s not just her mother’s sickness that leads Maria to fly to her side. Her mother wrote her a letter detailing her plans to shoot herself to end her life with dignity. Maria has to reconcile her own past and develop her relationship with Gwen. Her mother asks Maria to read the novel she has been working on. Maria reads it to her and decides which parts she wants her mother to hear; she’s nervous because the story concerns a woman finding herself through writing and visiting her sick mother after a long absence. Dream sequences and poems, all in different font sizes and formats, appear throughout. To Myslik-McFadden’s credit, this isn’t as confusing as it sounds. She keeps the stories separate, even if the different formats distract. Maria’s novel seems to reflect much of her life, though she tells her mother that it’s not autobiographical. The novel within a novel makes up the bulk of the book’s final 200 pages, only returning to the main story occasionally to mark the passing of time. The author leaves the reader to decide how much of Maria is contained in Anne, her novel’s protagonist. Myslik-McFadden imparts a wonderful sense of place and setting, letting the readers see, feel and smell the scenes. The action is clear and vivid, but the consequences are for the reader to ponder.
A nuanced, memorable book that draws no facile conclusions.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468030013
Page Count: 264
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, suggestive reconnaissance where the phantasma of other worlds—and private worlds—reveal a disconcerting...
Dr. Montague, an investigator of psychic disturbances, extends an invitation to three young people to join him at Hill House, whose tragic history has made it unfit for human habitation, and where perhaps they can intensify the forces at work.
Eleanor Vance, who had spent eleven years in caring for an invalid mother, is now alone in the world and unwanted—and she has had a poltergeist experience; Theodora is telepathic; and Luke Sanderson is the nephew of the present owner. During the days and nights to follow there are doors that close; drafts that chill; banging and scurrying noises—and writing on the walls. Mrs. Montague arrives—eager to launch a session with planchette and hoping for further materializations beyond these "decided manifestations." But Eleanor becomes increasingly disturbed and distraught; her hoped for close friendship with Theodora is brushed aside—as Theodora goes off alone with Luke; she is the most susceptible to the dark history of this house and attempts to imitate a tragedy in the past; and the story which begins as a spritely tour of the spirit world, ends on a note of real disequilibrium.
A tantalizing, suggestive reconnaissance where the phantasma of other worlds—and private worlds—reveal a disconcerting similarity, and Shirley Jackson's special following will find pause to wonder and admire.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1959
ISBN: 0140071083
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1959
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A wild, inventive plot can’t hide the novel’s weak writing and lack of emotional center.
The debut novel from poet Lozada-Oliva shows five women’s lives undone by a strange curse.
In Boston on Christmas Eve, 83-year-old Guatemalan immigrant Candelaria chats with her daughter on the phone and moments later inexplicably knifes her own loving boyfriend in the gut. The killing seems to trigger an earthquake—or an imagined cataclysm only Candelaria can see—just before the novel flashes back to a year prior to explain the murder. Candelaria’s daughter Lucia has three daughters, Candy, Bianca, and Paola, estranged from one another and recovering from addiction, betrayal, and violence, respectively. Dark stories emerge from the family’s history, including a relative who died mysteriously in the Candelaria Caves of Guatemala. With these pulp fiction elements in place, Lozada-Oliva then delivers a gleeful but clunky schlock-fest, complete with zombies, cannibalism, body-snatcher sex, and a fertility cult with an underground lair. As an idea it should amount to raucous fun, but somehow even with all this crammed in the novel still feels padded with needless scenes to reach 300 pages. As her granddaughters reunite under dire circumstances and Candelaria guns her way through post-earthquake Boston toward an Old Country Buffet, past and present merge for a blood-soaked finale, as male characters are eaten, stabbed, hung, and one later turns into a TV. In its best moments, the book leans toward Everything Everywhere All at Once territory, but the novel has very little heart and too much of the writing feels dashed off: “The world is finite, but women are forever,” “Bianca approached the TV like it was a giant horse,” and “Life is a lifelong journey.”
A wild, inventive plot can’t hide the novel’s weak writing and lack of emotional center.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781662601804
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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