A well-written spy story with a hollow center.
In this noir tale of international intrigue, a bored Minnesotan recognizes a political radical who tried to recruit him 30 years earlier.
At a concert in the Twin Cities, the narrator, an unnamed advertising executive, glimpses a comrade who three decades earlier had shoved him a Trotskyist Spartacist League pamphlet, which stated: “Join the Army and Organize From Within!” That interaction, he says, “changed my life instantly so that I haven’t been able to take anything at face value ever since.” This, apparently, is enough to make him tail the man, whom he discovers is Curtis Macpherson, president of the salt division at a food product conglomerate. Assisted by his gung-ho co-worker Nathalie, the narrator launches an ad hoc investigation, discovering that Macpherson worked as an FBI agent in the 1960s, infiltrating Chicago’s radical circles until his lover, a board member at the conglomerate, supplied him with a new life and a new nose. When Macpherson flies to Lisbon, the narrator follows him, though he notes (much as readers might) that he’s not sure why. In Portugal, he falls into an affair with a gorgeous secret agent who’s also tracking Macpherson and his paramour. The narrator evaluates all the women he meets, spy or not, on whether he finds them doable; when he attends the funeralof a murdered friend back in the States, he notes approvingly that many of the women attending possess “that hungry ‘I’m a sexual being’ look that most American women lose around the fifth month of pregnancy with the second child when they realize they’re bored with their husbands and their lives are over.” The narrator’s low-grade sexism isn’t mitigated much by his forbearance with his unfaithful, harpy wife, or by his love for his sons, beneficiaries of his wit and homemade blueberry muffins.Nevertheless, the author nails the dialogue of family chaos and spousal warfare while maintaining the discursive, hard-boiled writing style of noir. Though it can be difficult to follow the action, regular murders and a capitalist scheme to corner a commodities market help keep the events interesting.
A well-written spy story with a hollow center.Pub Date: May 26, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
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. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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