This surprisingly quirky and enticing tale delivers dark secrets and a lively protagonist.
A character-driven horror novel follows a teenager who lives on an island in the Hebrides.
Eleanor Carlyle is just shy of 16 years old. She lives on a small island in the North Atlantic called Ensay, where she helps her mother run the Ensay House Hotel. There are only 407 people on Ensay and, as Eleanor tells it, she knows all of them. In her free time, Eleanor enjoys painting and focusing on her correspondence courses with a secondary school on the mainland. While she may seem average, she is anything but. For one, she suffers from agoraphobia: She has not been outside the hotel since she was 3. What’s more, her upcoming 16th birthday is very important. The island is home to a secretive group of women who practice a pagan-esque religion and Eleanor is an acolyte. This means that once she turns 16, she must choose a man with whom to lose her virginity. The male lover will then be burned alive. Eleanor’s mother was also an acolyte. It is an aspect of life on Ensay that the typical visitor never gets to see. Readers follow Eleanor as she goes about her days with her religious-ritual fate approaching. According to the rules, she must pick the man herself. Enter a boy named Connor Maxwell, who is from Ireland and the nephew of a local resident. Connor takes a liking to Eleanor despite her peculiarities. Pondering this surprising development, she reflects: “I think he likes me and I’ve never been liked before and I don’t know if I like him or if it’s just the incandescent novelty.” Could she really send Connor to his death? What if everything she thinks she knows about Ensay is wrong?
Porteous’ engaging narrative takes a slow-burn approach to Ensay’s casual horrors. Unlike in a more traditional horror novel, the terror of Eleanor’s religious reality is almost secondary to her daily life in the family hotel. By the time readers start to notice that the eccentric story has a dark side, they are already familiar with some of Ensay’s silly details, including that there are just two cars (only one of which is running) and that “most of the people on the island are quite old and have a pleasant, book-learned sense of humour.” It’s a setup that makes the tale’s spookier aspects (for example, women in black cloaks and the residents’ apparent penchant for burning bodies) all the more troubling. Still, some of the casual details can drone on. At one point, Eleanor explains the differences of full European breakfasts (an English breakfast versus an Irish breakfast versus a Scottish breakfast) and how guests from around the world react to them. As notable as it may be that the English breakfast includes a tomato, there are bigger problems to attend to. Ultimately, the story’s slow approach turns out to be the book’s greatest strength as well as its greatest weakness. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition creates a singular tale with a uniquely chatty tone. Eleanor is an indelible protagonist in a memorable place. The charming island that sells “semi-Celtic jewellery” to tourists is also one that apparently sends some unlucky men to fiery deaths. Welcome to the outer limits of Scottish hospitality.
This surprisingly quirky and enticing tale delivers dark secrets and a lively protagonist.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 9798509021831
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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