Both sides of the race issue get a fair hearing in this well-executed tale.
A psychological novel focuses on issues of race, personal responsibility, and privilege at a California liberal arts college.
College student Evelyn Davis is dealing with a stalker. Trouble is, no seems to know what to do about him. Eddie Pike, an Afghanistan War veteran, is an older White student. He maintains he means Evelyn no harm, but it’s obvious his personal problems exceed the services that the college’s counseling clinic offers. A sophisticated African American woman, Evelyn knows how to navigate both the Black and White worlds, “having been brought up in a well-to-do white neighborhood.” Professor Billie Ochoa teaches a class Eddie and Evelyn share. Billie is enamored of her Cuban heritage and Fidel Castro’s island paradise. As a conscientious educator, she tutors Eddie alone so he can continue with the class while Evelyn stays safe. But the unwanted intrusions mount, from Eddie’s following Evelyn to his sneaking into her apartment. Campus police tiptoe around the problem because they say they can’t prove Eddie committed a crime. Evelyn is leery of the authorities, and soon the issues of race and administrative action boil over. Billie is exasperated, venting to a college official: “A young African-American woman who’s being stalked? Doesn’t that distress you? Just a bit? That it’s the white men you’re always protecting?” The administration reaches out to Eddie, but when a restraining order is issued, word gets out that he is a stalker, and he becomes the object of student protests. In this engaging tale, Axelroth is fair to all the characters and allows Evelyn and others to see both sides of the complicated race issue. At times, Evelyn feels discomfort at being “a stand-in for whatever Black people thought—about police shooting unarmed Black men, and looting in Black neighborhoods, and isn’t affirmative action just reverse discrimination?” Personal responsibility becomes an issue when Billie lies and tells the authorities Eddie threatened Evelyn and when an administration member attempts to use the tumultuous campus situation to benefit her own agenda. This is set against secondary themes of the Cuban revolution, communism, and how sometimes the ends justify the means, which all get a rousing pro and con analysis in an academic hothouse of impassioned young thinkers.
Both sides of the race issue get a fair hearing in this well-executed tale.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-79481-618-3
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Lulu.com
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2022
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
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
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