This promising new writer might borrow from the masters, but he’s primed for loyal fans of his own.
Dove’s impressive debut is a well-paced thriller with supernatural touches that follows a family in the aftermath of a tragic car accident.
Dove uses a somewhat unconventional format, following two main characters in alternating chapters, designating the intertwining narratives “The Book of Ruthie” and “The Book of Cole.” Ruthie is actually Sophie Danner, a teenage girl kidnapped from the scene of the car accident and taken hostage by a family in a backwater shack. Gabriel, the main heavy, brings Sophie home and tells his mentally disturbed mother, Cora, that Sophie is her daughter Ruthie, believed to have drowned years ago when she was 4. Cole is Sophie’s father, and his first-person chapters cover his search for Sophie and his wife, Natalie, as he’s guided by a force he can’t explain. The characters are vivid, their dialogue fit perfectly to them, each with a unique voice. Sophie is determined, Gabriel terrifying, and Cole’s struggle to retain his sanity is palpable. In some of the early moments, Cora echoes Annie Wilkes, the psychotic nurse from Stephen King’s Misery, a bit too closely, but Dove separates the stories enough that his ultimately feels more like an homage than theft. Armed with a solid premise, Dove knows how to bring it to life. There’s a minor misstep, though, in adding another section as well as another point of view in the final third of the book as the action rises to its peak. Other than that, Dove does a fantastic job of fitting together Sophie’s third-person narrative and Cole’s first-person narrative, heightening the suspense as Sophie deals with the menace of Gabriel and the unhinged Cora, while Cole’s “flashbacks” lead him to solve the mystery of his accident and the disappearance of his family from the scene. Fortunately, Dove uses the possibility of a supernatural connection sparingly enough to keep the story rooted in reality, and he shades the action with occasional humor to color the well-built personalities.
This promising new writer might borrow from the masters, but he’s primed for loyal fans of his own.Pub Date: April 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482043969
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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