A dark, delightfully bizarre story that dives deep into the psyches of unbalanced characters.
In Widdicks’ debut psychological thriller, a sleep-deprived therapist becomes obsessed with a curious woman who seems to have restored her ability to dream.
Dr. Cressida Dunhill hasn’t dreamed since she had a car accident a decade earlier. She has no memories of the incident, but she survived it and someone named Max didn’t. One day, Viola “Vee” Marquis walks into Cressida’s office in Silverside, Oregon, at a psychiatric facility known locally as “The Mermaid Asylum.” Although Vee claims that she’s there because she’s upset that her boyfriend, Rex, is cheating on her, she seems indifferent about the visit. Cressida is unsettled and mesmerized by the woman as she casually strolls around the office. The doctor has a dream soon afterward in which she recalls some of the accident, and she associates this apparent breakthrough with Vee. The therapist wants to continue seeing her, even if that means pursuing a relationship outside the office. One potential obstacle is Rex, who Cressida believes is responsible for the bruises that she sees on Vee’s body. Protecting Vee from Rex may be the only way that Cressida can overcome her troubled, sometimes-sleepless nights. Before long, however, her concern for her patient turns into a fixation—one that could be dangerous for everybody involved. Widdicks’ deceptively simple tale has very few characters and a plot that burns slowly, gradually offering up its revelations about who Max is and particulars of the accident. There are a couple of plot twists along the way, but the novel’s most unpredictable element is the protagonist herself; she begins as a therapist who unquestionably cares about her patients, but surprising details about her past will cause readers to see her in a new light. The author’s prose is acute and self-assured, with pithy descriptions shaded with black humor: “Her hair was the topic of several discussions that day, including one twenty-minute negotiation with a paranoid patient who refused to even enter the room.”
A dark, delightfully bizarre story that dives deep into the psyches of unbalanced characters.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73297-620-7
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Outmanned Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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