This tense, haunting tale gives readers front-row seats to the protagonist’s torment.
Armed strangers kidnap a vacationing couple in Kjeldsen’s (Land of Hidden Fires, 2017, etc.) taut thriller.
After three miscarriages, Marah Lenaerts has been sinking into depression. She’s an American expat who’s been living overseas for years with her trader husband, Eden, a Belgian currently based in Shanghai. Eden has been distancing himself from Marah, but he suggests they take a Malaysian getaway, and Marah reluctantly agrees. This decision may not bode well for her neuroses. Scuba diving is on the itinerary, and it triggers her terror of sea creatures. But the couple seems to grow closer, and Marah’s anxiety eases. This quickly changes when Eden and Marah are accosted by men brandishing M16s. Although the aggressors’ English is limited, it’s abundantly clear that they’re kidnapping the couple. What’s less clear, at least initially, is who their captors are and what exactly they want. Marah has always looked to Eden for a sense of safety and protection. But with her husband just as helpless as she is, she will have to find her own strength. Kjeldsen’s short novel moves at a blistering pace, putting Marah through one ordeal after another. The protagonist’s mass of trepidations amplifies the tension; even breaks from the captors’ threats, for example, are wrought with inner turmoil, including a fear that Eden will attempt escape without her. Sharp, concise writing only improves the tale. Furthermore, readers will relate to many of the experiences and, after tiger mosquitoes, sand flies, and other insects leave behind “a tapestry of bites and rashes,” will feel as uncomfortable and itchy as Marah. The kidnappers’ objective does eventually come to light, and though some will guess where the plot is heading, it won’t lessen the impact of the ending or Marah’s harrowing struggle.
This tense, haunting tale gives readers front-row seats to the protagonist’s torment.Pub Date: May 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9984657-3-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Grenzland Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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