For those who can withstand the difficult subject of infanticide, a suspenseful courtroom drama full of poignant flashbacks...
Two sisters re-examine their relationship as one of them stands trial for murdering the other’s infant.
Martha Blackwater’s 8-week-old baby, Layla, suffocated while she was under her aunt Becky’s care. The book opens several months after the baby’s death, as Martha attends Becky’s trial, desperately hoping to be convinced of her sister’s innocence. Becky had been working as a nanny for Layla, a plan the sisters hatched when Becky complained about her dead-end job as a set designer. Feeling as though she’s never measured up to her perfect older sister, Becky is determined to excel at being a nanny. Doctors hypothesize that Layla suffers from gastric distress, but they are unable to alleviate her symptoms, and the baby cries incessantly. When Martha leaves town on a business trip at the same time that her husband, Scott, is traveling, Becky is left to care for Layla, and to suffer her endless crying, for two nights. The prosecution now insists that the child’s interminable crying pushed Becky over the edge, leading her to smother Layla into silence. As Martha listens to the prosecution, she cannot believe that Becky would ever harm her child. However, with each witness’s surprising testimony, Martha begins to wonder whether she’s ever known her sister at all. As Martha and Becky take turns narrating this tale, they provide details on both the courtroom events and their personal histories, showcasing their deep bond and subtle resentments. The author also includes chapters told from the perspectives of several witnesses, with each of these chapters appearing immediately before the same witness testifies in court. Rather than feeling repetitive, this approach emphasizes the differences between real-life events and courtroom testimony, a medium through which facts can easily get warped. Through these varying perspectives, the author draws complex, nuanced characters while also illustrating the litany of emotions that can torment bereft parents. With fast-paced prose and several unexpected twists, the author skillfully weaves a web in which any of the characters might be the guilty party.
For those who can withstand the difficult subject of infanticide, a suspenseful courtroom drama full of poignant flashbacks and unique insights.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53939-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Though Eggers strives for a portentous, Orwellian tone, this book mostly feels scolding, a Kurt Vonnegut novel rewritten by...
A massive feel-good technology firm takes an increasingly totalitarian shape in this cautionary tale from Eggers (A Hologram for the King, 2012, etc.).
Twenty-four-year-old Mae feels like the luckiest person alive when she arrives to work at the Circle, a California company that’s effectively a merger of Google, Facebook, Twitter and every other major social media tool. Though her job is customer-service drudgework, she’s seduced by the massive campus and the new technologies that the “Circlers” are working on. Those typically involve increased opportunities for surveillance, like the minicameras the company wants to plant everywhere, or sophisticated data-mining tools that measure every aspect of human experience. (The number of screens at Mae’s workstation comically proliferate as new monitoring methods emerge.) But who is Mae to complain when the tools reduce crime, politicians allow their every move to be recorded, and the campus cares for her every need, even providing health care for her ailing father? The novel reads breezily, but it’s a polemic that’s thick with flaws. Eggers has to intentionally make Mae a dim bulb in order for readers to suspend disbelief about the Circle’s rapid expansion—the concept of privacy rights are hardly invoked until more than halfway through. And once they are invoked, the novel’s tone is punishingly heavy-handed, particularly in the case of an ex of Mae's who wants to live off the grid and warns her of the dehumanizing consequences of the Circle’s demand for transparency in all things. (Lest that point not be clear, a subplot involves a translucent shark that’s terrifyingly omnivorous.) Eggers thoughtfully captured the alienation new technologies create in his previous novel, A Hologram for the King, but this lecture in novel form is flat-footed and simplistic.
Though Eggers strives for a portentous, Orwellian tone, this book mostly feels scolding, a Kurt Vonnegut novel rewritten by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-35139-3
Page Count: 504
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
SEEN & HEARD
This thriller aims right for the heart and never lets go.
A tense thriller explores the bond between sisters and family dynamics that give new meaning to the term “dysfunctional.”
Three years ago, 17-year-old Emma Tanner and her 15-year-old sister, Cassandra, left home, disappearing into the night; as Walker's (All Is Not Forgotten, 2016, etc.) book opens, Cass shows up at her family’s house—without Emma. Dr. Abby Walker of the FBI, a forensic psychiatrist who’s been on the case from the beginning, is desperate to find out what happened and to find Emma before it’s too late. Cass tells Abby she and Emma had been arguing the night they took off and that it soon became obvious that Emma was packing up to leave. Cass, hoping to get her sister in trouble, hid in the car when Emma drove off, heading to the beach, where she was met by a man and woman Cass didn't recognize. When Cass revealed herself, they decided to take her with them as they left for a remote island off the coast of Maine. Emma was pregnant, Cass says, and the couple had offered to help her, but what they really had planned was to keep the baby for themselves. Cass finally managed to escape, she says, but without Emma. It’s a harrowing tale, and Cass says all she wants is to find Emma, but Abby suspects she's hiding something. Cass’ first-person narrative, interspersed with Abby’s investigation, paints a shocking picture of Cass’ ordeal and her family’s disturbing history. Her mother, Judy Martin, has always used her beauty and charm to manipulate her family, and her girls had to flatter her to win her affection. She was jealous of the attention given to her beautiful daughters, which threatened her fragile ego, and she was always scheming to get what she wanted—even seducing her stepson, Hunter, who was obsessed with Emma. Cass is a survivor, forced to become an adult very quickly, and readers will root for her as she tells her disturbing story and looks back on what could have been, when hope was all she and Emma had.
This thriller aims right for the heart and never lets go.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-14143-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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