A riveting character study even during its most appalling moments.
In McGovern’s dark debut thriller, a troubled man snaps and commits murder—again.
Aaron Walsh lives rent-free in Dublin with his mother, Mary, and younger sister, Rachel. He hates the idea of growing old, so he fantasizes about committing suicide or becoming a murder victim. His days generally start with Mary hounding him about housework, while unemployed Rachel does little other than stare at her smartphone. Things aren’t much better at Computer Heaven, the computer repair shop where Aaron listens to endless complaints from walk-ins. Surprisingly, he’s intrigued by one of the customers—a woman named Jane, who’s seemingly immune to Aaron’s excessive eye contact, which he says gives people the “heebie-jeebies.” He comes up with a plan to drop off Jane’s computer at her home, hoping that he can get himself invited inside, but things don’t go the way that he hoped. Instead, he succumbs to a violent outburst that turns homicidal. As it turns out, it isn’t the first time that he’s killed someone—and sadly, it won’t be the last. Although this story is often somber and grotesque, McGovern injects enough nuance to prevent it from being a mere blood bath. For example, he sporadically pulls away from Aaron’s first-person narrative to offer other characters’ perspectives. Most are posthumous, but they offer tender recollections that make them sympathetic, or they show how Aaron looks through another person’s eyes. There’s a drastic plot turn in the latter half of the novel that implies that Aaron is cracking up; it’s unclear if some or all of what’s happening is only in his head, but the ambiguity only makes things more intriguing. Overall, Aaron is an unsavory character, to be sure, but he sometimes has heartfelt flashes of insight: “Life is all one big trap and no one sees it because they are too busy playing along.”
A riveting character study even during its most appalling moments.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9956108-0-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Carrowmore
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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