A book to keep you up at night.
A beautifully crafted exercise in terror from one of Germany’s most celebrated contemporary authors.
The unnamed narrator of this novella is a screenwriter trying to complete a sequel to his hit, Besties. In order to help him work, he and his wife retreat to a rental house in the mountains, taking their 4-year-old daughter with them. This is, of course, hardly a distraction-free environment. The notebook that is supposed to be devoted to his script is filled with more personal matter—good-natured grumbling about raising a small child, descriptions of the tensions within his marriage, and complaints about the difficulties he’s having figuring out what happens next for his characters. The parenting vignettes are funny: “Meanwhile Esther was telling us about a friend from preschool who is named either Lisi or Ilse or Else and either took a toy away from her or gave her one...; little kids are not good storytellers.” The conflicts between the narrator and his wife, Susanna, are less innocent, and they threaten to darken what should be an innocuous chick flick. Then the bad dreams begin, and it’s not long before the line between these night terrors and everyday reality begins to blur. This novel is, in many ways, a classic haunted-house tale. There are warnings about the house from the people in the village below. There’s a creeping sense of horror. There are frightening phenomena that the narrator cannot explain. And there are specters. Kehlmann (F, 2014, etc.) uses all these familiar tropes beautifully. But he also creates a sense of existential dread that transcends the typical ghost story. The relationship between the narrator and his daughter adds a level of anxiety; he has to protect her not just from the house, but also from knowledge of what’s happening. And Kehlmann deserves special notice for recognizing just how uncanny a baby monitor can be.
A book to keep you up at night.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-87192-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
Another Psy/Changeling page-turner from the brilliant Singh.
After saving a woman from a serial killer, a wolf changeling will do anything to keep her safe, but the stakes get higher when her unique powers may signal the worldwide rise of aggressive rogue energy.
Nearing the first anniversary of his brother’s death, Alexei Harte picks up an overwhelming psychic broadcast of grief and discovers an empath imprisoned in an underground bunker. When he rescues her, at first her only emotions seem to be rage and grief for her recently deceased cat. But as Memory begins to trust Alexei and the world he helps her enter, her conflicted, negative emotions begin to calm. The other empaths she meets help her understand that her gifts are unique and powerful and reframe them beyond her violent past which forced her to use them to help a psychopath. The more they work with her, the more they come to believe that she might be particularly positioned to help strengthen the complicated PsyNet, the vast psychic network on which the Psy depend to keep them connected and healthy. Alexei, meanwhile, is wrestling with the death of his brother, who went violently rogue one year earlier. He’s definitely interested in making Memory his mate but worries he carries the rogue genes that threaten her even as he’s trying to keep her safe from a variety of other dangers. The Psy/Changeling Trinity series continues with another complex, fascinating angle to the fall of Silence and its manifestations. Alexei’s family represents the rogue component in the Changeling world, while Memory both represents and acts as the first line of defense against a rising rogue element within the Psy. Favorite alpha characters weave through the story, meeting the new challenge with their typical intelligence, flexibility, and collaboration.
Another Psy/Changeling page-turner from the brilliant Singh.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0359-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Through the intensity of his characters’ experiences, Davidson reconnects us to our own memories of growing up.
A coming-of-age narrative about ghosts, friendship, and family secrets.
Jake Baker is a neurosurgeon who takes us back to the summer when he was 12 years old and growing up amid the tackiness of Niagara Falls, a landscape desperately in need of redemption. Although Jake is something of a loner, he hits it off with two kids new to the neighborhood, Billy and Dove Yellowbird. While Billy is the same age as Jake, Dove is two years older, and Jake is immediately smitten by her strength and self-confidence. There to help them all in their transition out of childhood is Jake’s eccentric Uncle Cal, like Jake, an “odd duck” who is almost like a child himself. Cal owns a shop called the Occultorium and has over time “cultivated a network of mystics and paranoiacs and those who saw the world at a different skew.” Through motivations mysterious even to himself, Cal proposes that they form a Saturday Night Ghost Club to explore arcane places around their neighborhood, including a Screaming Tunnel (“Cataract City’s most famous haunted spot”), a car that has been submerged for years in the bend of a river, and the remains of a house that had been ravaged by fire. As he moves through these adventures, Jake transitions from being terrified to accommodating himself to both the strangeness of his uncle and the strangeness of the world. Through his parents, Jake eventually learns how Cal is connected to each of the venues he takes the children to even though Cal himself doesn’t understand the depth of these connections. As a result of these experiences during this memorable summer when he’s on the cusp of adolescence, Jake’s understanding and compassion are enlarged: tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.
Through the intensity of his characters’ experiences, Davidson reconnects us to our own memories of growing up.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313393-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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