Although Marina is a richly drawn, deeply involving heroine, the overly contrived plot sits uneasily with Ginsberg’s earnest...
Memoirist and novelist Ginsberg (Blind Submission, 2006, etc.) mixes supernatural and film noir elements in this mystery about a woman whose living as a psychic falls apart when her psychic powers become too real.
Marina has told fortunes for a living since childhood, using powers of observation and intuition to tell people what they want to hear. In 2005, desperate to escape a bad situation in south Florida, she tricks an old woman, Mrs. Golden, into paying her a large sum for her services. But Mrs. Golden also forces Marina to accept a valuable ruby ring as a talisman to protect her son. Out of guilt and superstition, Marina wears the ring around her neck at all times when she makes a new start in California. Her career takes off after she tells fortunes at a party thrown by Madeline, whose rich husband Andrew is pressuring Madeline to have a baby. Despite Andrew’s antipathy toward Marina, Madeline is soon a client. Other clients include Cooper, a gay man in love with a man who won’t admit he’s gay, and Eddie, a married womanizer. As her clients become increasingly dependent on Marina, their lives begin to unravel, and their attitudes toward Marina turn hostile, even threatening. Meanwhile, she falls into a romantic affair with the mysterious stranger Gideon. After she and Gideon make love for the first time, he announces in a fury that he is Mrs. Golden’s son and takes the ruby ring from her. Marina is crushed. Adding to her distress is a recurring nightmare as well as her sudden ability to see ghosts. She does not know what to do with her new psychic powers, even when she sees that Gideon is in danger. Then someone close to Marina is killed and she falls under suspicion until the real culprit is revealed.
Although Marina is a richly drawn, deeply involving heroine, the overly contrived plot sits uneasily with Ginsberg’s earnest take on paranormal powers.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-38272-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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
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