A remarkable and brainy work of metafiction.
An Australian writer heads to Germany, where he gets strong doses of philosophy, violence, taboo sex, and unreliable narration.
As Stephen Romei explains in his introduction, the debut novel by Henshaw (The Snow Kimono, 2015) divided readers in his native Australia when it was first published in 1988. It’s not hard to see why. The heart of the story centers on Wolfi, a German scholar who (in documents given to the Australian narrator) relates his harsh upbringing by his cold, philosophical father, his erotic obsession with his sister, his lost virginity to a prostitute scheduled and paid for by his grandmother, and his involvement in shoplifting and an ill-fated attempt to shake down patrons of gay male prostitutes in Berlin. Dour and/or distasteful as all that might be (though the prostitute incident plays as an adolescent comedy of errors), Henshaw isn’t going for shock value: Wolfi’s memoir is a document that the narrator is picking apart and testing for accuracy, and the whole novel is a kind of study on the trustworthiness of narrative. The story is awash in references to deep-meta novelists like Italo Calvino, Albert Camus, and Peter Handke and philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger, and there are regular asides about misperception and mistranslation. “The gap between fiction, between abstract speculation and so-called reality became blurred for me,” the narrator writes, and the novel is remarkable for juggling its blend of sex, secrets, and philosophy without losing narrative force or structural integrity. Indeed, the closing chapters have real drama as the narrator attempts to uncover the truth about Wolfi’s storytelling. The novel feels like an id laid bare, and Henshaw keeps the story in line while constantly pointing out the limitations of words to capture reality.
A remarkable and brainy work of metafiction.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-922182-55-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Text
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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