Captivating, like Ruth Rendell at her best, but with a mordant hipness that marks the welcome U.S. debut of British novelist...
In an erotic psychological thriller, a young agoraphobic suspects her lover of leading a double life.
Stella, an aromatherapist, has ordered her life to defuse the power of her phobias. She sets up her practice at home because she is unable to step outside without hyperventilating. Her clients—all wealthy, depressed, middle-aged women—come there. Pathologically afraid of gas leaks, she arranges to replace gas-burning appliances and the heating system with electricity. She’s a head case, obviously, but one with wiles and a will to live. On the day Ivan arrives to remove her gas pipes, she seduces him. He moves in, traveling light, just a TV, trash bag full of clothes, and a cigar box of mementos. The couple cohabit contentedly, with Ivan acting as intermediary for the outside world and Stella maintaining perfect order at home—until the day Ivan returns wearing a gold-plated ID bracelet, a gift from an old girlfriend. This intrusion into her controlled world leads Stella to search for others, which she finds: a woman’s photograph and a plait of silver-blonde hair stashed in a bureau and £50,000 hidden in the survival kit (GPS watch, flares, water-sterilization tablets, etc.) she keeps for emergencies. Stella enjoins her sister, the blithe divorcée Skye, to shadow Ivan. Normally advancing through her day with precision, Stella suffers several accidental falls and cuts as she fixates on transforming her appearance to mirror Ivan’s old flame. Honeysuckle (relieves nostalgia’s pangs) and jasmine (an aphrodisiac) waft through the flat as the starched, tidy, redheaded Stella morphs into a Band-Aid–plastered, bruised blonde. The story transpires over five days, never leaving the mise en scène. This narrative economy heightens the already considerable suspense: Who is gas-lighting whom? Are Ivan and Skye conspirators? Or are Stella’s suspicions just more steps along the road to madness?
Captivating, like Ruth Rendell at her best, but with a mordant hipness that marks the welcome U.S. debut of British novelist Visman.Pub Date: June 20, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03402-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
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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