A measured, enjoyable dream tale that offers more questions than answers.
In this psychological thriller sequel, a stonemason struggles to distinguish reality from his increasingly complex world of dreams.
There’s good news for Michael Colt and his live-in girlfriend, Sue Kick. The couple’s first child will soon join their quiet life in Wisconsin. But Michael’s dreams lately have been bizarre and often baffling. Sometimes he dreams of apparently forgotten memories, such as his journey from Austria to the United States as an infant—with his long-dead parents he’s never remembered. He also dreams of things that either haven’t actually happened or belong in someone else’s memory bank; in one instance, he’s seriously injured jumping a wall only to wake up unscathed. And he’s not always waking up in bed, as he occasionally enters into a “trance,” even with Sue right next to him. All of this understandably confuses Michael as well as Sue, who has vivid dreams of her own. The story culminates with Michael in a dream world that he’s apparently created, with a series of doors that will hopefully lead him to illumination. While Siwicki infuses this leisurely paced narrative with ambiguity, the myriad dream scenes are generally discernible. Michael, for example, pops up in unexpected places, like “some sort of old government building.” The dream memories are also intriguing. Sue’s similar dream of herself as a newborn centers on her stepfather finding a tiny baby girl under a table at a bar. This novel primarily moves from dreams to Michael and Sue’s family moments (for example, hanging wallpaper) along with the author’s intermittent asides on such topics as religion, science, and mind travel. The final act spins off into new territory and introduces fresh elements, including the enigmatic “Rim Stone” and the titular Tribe. But readers shouldn’t expect much clarification, which Siwicki is evidently saving for the next installment.
A measured, enjoyable dream tale that offers more questions than answers.Pub Date: April 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9792622-5-8
Page Count: 279
Publisher: SLABYPRESS
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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