A dark and compelling tale of violence and dementia in colonial Massachusetts, with an unforgettable young girl at the heart...
A historical novel of psychological suspense explores 17th-century New England.
Freemartin’s (The Cult of Scorpio, 2015, etc.) work opens in 1680 in Greenwood Village, a small Massachusetts Bay Colony town near enough to Boston to buy city fineries but far enough away to seem most often like an alien world. Judith Temple, the town’s midwife and apothecary, is an unconventional, free-spirited woman who has taken in as her apprentice a 10-year-old Native American orphan she names Vigory. They form one of the book’s narrative focal points. Judith and Vigory are outsiders to the strict and sometimes borderline-hysterical religious conservatism of the town, a Cotton Mather-style righteousness that’s spearheaded by Harriet Browne, the wife of the village’s constable. Freemartin portrays the relationship between Judith and Vigory with subtle compassion as a blend of teacher-student and mother-daughter (“Vigory attacked all Judith taught her with vigor; she did everything with a serious and vigorous sincerity, from eating to working, to those rare moments of play that children in the colony can find between harvest and planting season”). This stands in stark contrast to the twisted combination of hatred and abuse that Harriet feels for her grossly overweight daughter, Miriam. When Harriet declares that Greenwood should undergo a fast to recover God’s grace and her own daughter rebels, the tension festers into a cloud of psychological gloom that should be familiar to any student of the Salem witch trials. In this complex and insightful tale, Miriam remains the strangest and most striking character (“You could get lost following the expansive curves of her body, every line always radiating away from the core, the center of her being”). Her behavior becomes increasingly peculiar, and the town is visited with torrents of rain, an infestation of frogs, and other woes that lend themselves readily to supernatural explanations. Freemartin propels this plot forward with a sure hand and a sharp, knowing ear for revealing dialogue. Her powers of imagery are strong throughout (about Boston: its streets were “laid out like poorly set bones”). And the novel’s climax, which might seem overwrought in less skillful hands, is instead hold-your-breath gripping.
A dark and compelling tale of violence and dementia in colonial Massachusetts, with an unforgettable young girl at the heart of it all.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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