The latest from Moggach (Heartbreak Hotel, 2015, etc.) is a hodgepodge of infidelity and other lies that spans four continents.
In Pimlico, London, Petra falls in love with her best friend’s husband, Jeremy. In Beijing, China, Li Jing has just learned that her absentee husband, Wang Lei, is infertile. In White Springs, Texas, Lorrie signs up to be a surrogate mother after losing her nest egg in an Internet scam. All these threads lead to Oreya, West Africa, where both Jeremy and Lei do business and where Asaf, who operates a cellphone charging station, is plugged in to everyone’s secrets. Petra’s complicated relationship with Bev, her former roommate, is the most vivid—Petra learns firsthand that Bev’s cheerful social media posts about her happy marriage are pure fiction, and their shared history gives context to her whirlwind romance with Bev's husband. She has more of a butterfly effect on the other characters, whose outrageous predicaments unfold unevenly in alternating chapters. Lorrie can explain how she can hide her pregnant belly from her neighbors—she’s a stereotypical fat American who is a victim of corn syrup as well as fraud—but it’s harder to believe she’d hide such a life-altering choice from her spouse, who is away on military duty. Jing, in contrast, seems happier not knowing where her husband’s money is coming from. When they finally meet in West Africa—in a poor but modernized area populated by wild dogs, wily locals, and an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company—they confront their false assumptions about each other and begin to consider the impact of their actions on the world as well as in their own lives.
Kooky and diverse, each woman’s secret unfolds in scintillating bits that lead to a scandalous finish.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-242733-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
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A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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PROFILES
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. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE
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