LESATH

In this debut novel, a man wrongly imprisoned because of his resemblance to an escaped convict stumbles on an even darker conspiracy. 

Greg is a model of mediocrity and happy underachievement—he’s always managed to just get by, living a life of “complacent dignity.” He becomes fascinated by the folklore surrounding an old, abandoned building that apparently houses something sinister, and he decides to investigate and maybe gather material worthy of a podcast. But he passes out suddenly, and awakes in what appears to be a hospital, though staffed with peculiarly unfriendly, taciturn nurses. Dr. Carver, a congenial but slippery character who seems to be in charge, informs Greg that they found him unconscious just outside the “facility,” which he unreassuringly describes as “a joint mental health and correctional facility that implements the lifestyle of a monastery.” Carver confesses that while Greg doesn’t belong there, he can’t simply be released. An inmate who bears a striking resemblance to him escaped. Carver wants to keep Greg incarcerated to placate potentially riotous prisoners and fend off the authorities. Kherbash adroitly conjures an atmosphere of menacing uncertainty—as Greg attempts to escape, he begins to reckon that Carver is experimenting on the patients in some sepulcher fashion. A shooting on the grounds creates an opportunity for a prison break, and Greg joins forces with a crew of inmates intent on escaping. But he’s flummoxed by his inability to distinguish between reality and his drug-induced hallucinations, a demarcation artfully kept ambiguous by the author. Who are these “singing sirens” Greg keeps hearing? And what are the strangely terrifying creatures that seem to haunt the building’s crawl spaces? The downside of Kherbash’s intentional injection of nebulousness into the plot is its inaccessibility—readers will have to make effortful and sometimes tedious strides to penetrate a nearly opaque story. Some readers may feel that the short novel is not worth the labor—as a whole, the plot is still presented within the grooves of a timeworn formula, a track from which it never really departs. 

A skillfully rendered, if wearisome, thriller.