A self-absorbed petty thief's life is turned upside down when he is reunited with his estranged 13-year-old daughter.
Although Mark has his complaints (not enough sex from his hot blonde wife, too few jobs in carpentry), his life in Norwich, England, with Nicole and their young daughter is peaceful. When his ex-girlfriend Kim calls to say he needs to see his 13-year-old daughter Lily, this peace is shattered. A decade earlier, Kim disappeared, taking three-year-old Lily with her. Mark hasn’t seen or heard from the pair since—nor has he given them much thought. Now, the memories come crashing back: the violent fights he and Kim engaged in; the funny-looking child they used to mock, calling her a “garden gnome”; the rampant indiscretions. When Mark finally meets Lily, after convincing himself he is ready to be her dad again, she is a thin, angry child who wears skimpy clothes and talks of sexual abuse at her mother's boyfriends' hands. Her bitterness sparks Mark's temper, causing him to verbally lash out at the child, at Kim—at one point surmising that maybe he didn't hit her hard enough when they argued—and at Nicole, whom he suspects of infidelity. Still, he remains drawn to the girl and tries clumsily to become her friend. Her willful rages and sarcasm remind him of his own childhood, shattered by his parents' divorce. Mark and Nicole take Lily in at Christmas, but her lying, thieving and drinking fray their nerves, and soon thereafter, her mother packs her off to an institution for disturbed children. In a crushing, grim climax, Mark sets off to rescue her.
A disturbing, raw tale of masculine rage and family dysfunction, bluntly told.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-85242-837-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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When the newly elected Vice President’s life is threatened, the Secret Service runs to nomadic soldier-of-fortune Jack Reacher (Echo Burning, 2001, etc.) in this razor-sharp update of The Day of the Jackal and In the Line of Fire that’s begging to be filmed.
Why Reacher? Because M.E. Froelich, head of the VP’s protection team, was once a colleague and lover of his late brother Joe, who’d impressed her with tales of Jack’s derring-do as an Army MP. Now Froelich and her Brooks Brothers–tailored boss Stuyvesant have been receiving a series of anonymous messages threatening the life of North Dakota Senator/Vice President–elect Brook Armstrong. Since the threats may be coming from within the Secret Service’s own ranks—if they aren’t, it’s hard to see how they’ve been getting delivered—they can’t afford an internal investigation. Hence the call to Reacher, who wastes no time in hooking up with his old friend Frances Neagley, another Army vet turned private eye, first to see whether he can figure out a way to assassinate Armstrong, then to head off whoever else is trying. It’s Reacher’s matter-of-fact gift to think of everything, from the most likely position a sniper would assume at Armstrong’s Thanksgiving visit to a homeless shelter to the telltale punctuation of one of the threats, and to pluck helpers from the tiny cast who can fill the remaining gaps because they aren’t idiots or stooges. And it’s Child’s gift to keep tightening the screws, even when nothing’s happening except the arrival of a series of unsigned letters, and to convey a sense of the blank impossibility of guarding any public figure from danger day after highly exposed day, and the dedication and heroism of the agents who take on this daunting job.
Relentlessly suspenseful and unexpectedly timely: just the thing for Dick Cheney’s bedside reading wherever he’s keeping himself these days.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14861-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
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Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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