Not every story will be to every taste, but the average is high enough to satisfy readers of all genders.
“Is there a distinctive female noir?” asks Oates (The Pursuit, 2019, etc.) in her introduction. This collection may not settle that question, but it goes a long way toward supplying candidates for an emerging canon.
There are 15 stories here, all but one of them new, and half a dozen new poems. From Aimee Bender’s enigmatic “Firetown,” in which a female private eye searches for a missing husband and cat on behalf of a client whose motives are even more mysterious than the disappearance, to Cassandra Khaw’s fablelike “Mothers, We Dream,” in which the man who’s miraculously survived a shipwreck finds himself hemmed in by both his female interrogator and his female associates, these stories show empowered women either running roughshod over men or ignoring them entirely. Even the heroines of Livia Llewellyn’s “One of These Nights,” S.J. Rozan’s “A History of the World in Five Objects,” S.A. Solomon’s “Impala,” and Sheila Kohler’s “Miss Martin,” all victims of abusive men, find unexpected ways to transform their victimhood into violent agency. Lisa Lim’s heavily illustrated “The Hunger” dramatizes a savage mode of female mourning; Edwidge Danticat’s “Please Translate,” first published in 2014, collects 41 frantic phone messages from a woman to the husband who’s run off with their son; Margaret Atwood’s six poems include meditations on female werewolves and the maternal side of the Sirens; Oates’ own “Assassin” follows a woman who methodically hatches and executes a plan to decapitate the prime minister. The women here are equally comfortable—that is, equally disturbing—when they’re cast as reluctant detectives, as in Steph Cha’s “Thief,” witnesses to possible crimes, as in Elizabeth McCracken’s “An Early Specimen,” accused murderers, as in Valerie Martin’s “Il Grifone,” or potential healers, as in Lucy Taylor’s “Too Many Lunatics” and Jennifer Morales’ “The Boy Without a Bike.” The punchline of the one story with a male lead, Bernice L. McFadden’s “OBF, Inc.,” entirely justifies its outlier status.
Not every story will be to every taste, but the average is high enough to satisfy readers of all genders.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61775-762-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Tepid terrors along the way to a mildly surprising end.
Suburban thriller from the prolific Coben (No Second Chance, 2002, etc.), about a perfect husband who disappears when a photo from the past shows up in the latest batch from the photomat.
Perfectly in love since their romantic meeting in France 15 years earlier, Jack and Grace Lawson are living the suburban dream: Windstar, Saab, daughter, son. He makes lots of money, she makes lots of art. There is a teeny flaw. Grace limps. It’s the scar she bears from the trauma she endured before the trip to France. There was this rock concert. Shots were fired. Panic. Deaths. Heroism. Cowardice. Badly mangled Grace made it out of a coma with a week or two of memory gone and a healthy dislike of big crowds. Suddenly the superperfect life she has built from the ruins has gone off the rails. Tucked in among a set of newly developed photos is a snap taken sometime in the ’80s. It shows a group of young people, possibly hip for the decade, and one of the lads, while hairier and callower, is clearly Jack. The insertion could only have been at the hands of the slacker in the Kodak kiosk, but he’s disappeared. And, upon viewing the photo, so has Jack, leaving Grace to ask that old reliable story-starting question: “Just who is this man I thought I knew?” Answers must be found quickly, for handsome Jack has been captured by a cold-blooded, sadistic, Korean killer and lies senseless in the boot of the stolen family minivan. Detective assistance comes from a rogue District Attorney, a wacky girlfriend, a lovelorn neighbor, a tough Jewish cop with a hole in his heart where his wife used to be, a shadowy, powerful mob guy whose son died at the rock concert, and possibly from Jimmy X, the rocker whose concert seems to have started the present subdivisional mayhem all those years ago.
Tepid terrors along the way to a mildly surprising end.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-525-94791-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
The moral overcomes the mystery in this sobering cautionary tale.
A hard-partying flight attendant runs afoul of Russian conspirators.
Cassandra Bowden, like her namesake, the prophetess who is never believed, has problems. A flight attendant since college, Cassie, now nearing 40, has a penchant for drinking to the blackout point and sleeping with strange men. On a flight to Dubai, while serving in first class, she flirts with hedge fund manager Alex Sokoloff, an American with Russian roots and oligarchic connections. She repairs to his hotel room, and during the drunken bacchanal that follows, Miranda, apparently a business acquaintance of Alex’s, visits with more vodka. The next morning Cassie wakes up next to Alex, who lies dead, his throat cut. She has blacked out much of the night, so although she’d grown rather fond of him, how can she be sure she didn’t kill him? Rushing back for the return flight, she decides not to disclose what happened, at least not until she's back home in New York City, where the justice system is arguably less draconian than in Dubai. At JFK, the FBI interviews the deplaning crew, and Cassie plays dumb. Unfortunately, her walk of shame through the hotel lobby was captured on security cam. Sporadically intercut with Cassie’s point of view is that of Elena, a Russian assassin for hire, who had presented herself as Miranda in Alex’s hotel room. After being thwarted by Cassie’s presence from executing Alex then, she returned to finish the job but decided not to make collateral damage of his passed-out bedmate, a bad call she must rectify per her sinister handler, Viktor. In the novel’s flabby midsection, Cassie continues to alternately binge-drink and regret the consequences as her lawyer, her union, and even the FBI struggle to protect her from herself. Although Bohjalian (The Sleepwalker, 2017, etc.) strives to render Cassie sympathetic, at times he can’t resist taking a judgmental stance toward her. As Cassie’s addiction becomes the primary focus, the intricate plotting required of an international thriller lags.
The moral overcomes the mystery in this sobering cautionary tale.Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-385-54241-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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