An ambitious debut defying easy categorization.
A young American diplomat comes face to face with the turmoil of Afghan society and the anguish of its people in this debut novel by a half-Afghan, half-Swedish writer.
While driving from Kabul to Herat with his wife, Rebecca, sometime in the late 1970s, Daniel Abdullah Sajadi hits and kills a little girl named Telaya. Daniel—whose mother is American and late father was an Afghan War hero—is the new director of a U.S. foreign aid agency, charged with fostering food production and wiping out the poppy fields that fuel the country’s dangerous drug trade. Local guide Taj Maleki comes to his aid, taking him to the police to report the accident and to tribal leaders and Telaya’s parents, to whom he makes payments. At length Daniel realizes that Taj is not a simple jobber but an opium khan. After a contentious discussion, Daniel, infuriated by Taj’s argument that opium keeps many Afghans out of poverty, kicks him out of his car. Over the next several months, guilt, recriminations, and persistent nightmares about Telaya plague Daniel. Taj stays in touch by means of oblique threats. Then Taj crashes a dinner party with Daniel’s mentor and other influencers in attendance and charms some of the guests. What begins as a thriller evolves into a detailed history of the region’s traumas and a less-successful emotional and personal odyssey. As the country descends into war, Daniel’s safety becomes a major concern. Peppered throughout the tale are a series of short, haunting fables, presented as children’s stories but disclosing the brutal reality of Afghan life.
An ambitious debut defying easy categorization.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-641-29158-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
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