A shocking tale of surviving abuse and living with its consequences.
Sowden’s debut novel follows a woman who’s haunted by the traumatic experiences of her teen years.
Grace is an accomplished chef living in Minneapolis. When she starts getting coverage on popular blogs, she panics at the thought of being interviewed, as she’d have to talk about herself and her difficult past. She already chain-smokes and practices jujitsu to help her cope with the horrific memories of her teens, many years ago. Her overbearing and difficult mother had arranged for her to be abducted by operatives of Epiphany Lake Academy, an expensive school for troubled high schoolers. Grace recalls the awful months in which she needed permission to stand, sit, speak, or do nearly anything else. At the academy, reading nonauthorized books, looking out the window for too long, and not properly confessing to past behavior were all punishable offenses that could earn violators time in “The Shed” with the school’s vile director, Crandall. Grace tried her best to deal with the disturbing therapy sessions and deplorable living conditions, but she soon learned that the school administrator had no reason to ever let her leave—and that all roads led to a mysterious second camp in the Dominican Republic called Mystic Bay, where some teens were sent to live in cages and endure further torture. Sowden excels at showing the long-lasting ramifications of these events on Grace as she alternates between past and present timelines; Sowden clearly shows how every aspect of the protagonist’s adult personality, from her interactions with co-workers to her reluctance to form friendships, has been altered by the horrible treatment she endured. The abuse itself is horrifying, and the author drives home the feelings of desperation and injustice; at several moments, it seems as if Grace has outsmarted the system only to end up in a worse position. Readers may be left with more questions than answers about Grace’s unstable mother, but the story still leads to satisfying and bittersweet conclusions about confronting one’s past.
A shocking tale of surviving abuse and living with its consequences.Pub Date: April 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947041-53-0
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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