A promising novel that skillfully uncovers obstacles for its protagonist to overcome.
In this debut thriller, a repressed incident mars a young woman’s life for years.
In 2009, Ellie Frites is a 20-something in a dead-end customer-service job at a tech company who spends her downtime drinking with a handful of friends. She can’t seem to sustain a relationship with a man, although she does have a new boyfriend named Tim. She’s also still grieving her beloved father’s death, due to cancer, which happened more than a decade ago. Ellie’s humdrum existence is shaken up when she begins having upsetting visions of her middle-school days, set in a rundown part of Marshside, Massachusetts, known as The Hollow. The visions specifically involve Lauren Vine and Maxine Lang, two of her former school friends, with whom Ellie lost touch when her best friend, Sarah, arrived from private school. Now, she can’t remember anything about what happened to them: “Did they move? Switch schools?” When Ellie fails to get any more information from either Sarah or her own estranged mother, she decides to go see psychologist Elizabeth Rollins. The doctor’s hypnotherapy helps Ellie to unlock repressed memories, which may put her and those she loves, including Tim, in danger. In this well-paced narrative, Barrell explores the relationship between Ellie’s newfound recollections and her present-day existence. For example, the character considers herself to be a pathetic loser when, in actuality, it’s clear that her past trauma has inhibited her. Once Barrell reveals the monstrous crime at the center of Ellie’s story, readers will understand why Ellie’s mind blocked it out—and in this novel, what you can’t see can hurt you. The author also shows the subtle, positive changes in the main character’s life as she slowly discovers what’s been haunting her. The supporting cast members, both at Ellie’s work and in her private life, are equally believable. All told, Barrell’s admirable debut is an engaging journey into a troubled mind.
A promising novel that skillfully uncovers obstacles for its protagonist to overcome.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5432-4858-6
Page Count: 274
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.
Another Brown (Inferno, 2013, etc.) blockbuster, blending arcana, religion, and skulduggery—sound familiar?—with the latest headlines.
You just have to know that when the first character you meet in a Brown novel is a debonair tech mogul and the second a bony-fingered old bishop, you’ll end up with a clash of ideologies and worldviews. So it is. Edmond Kirsch, once a student of longtime Brown hero Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist–turned–action hero, has assembled a massive crowd, virtual and real, in Bilbao to announce he’s discovered something that’s destined to kill off religion and replace it with science. It would be ungallant to reveal just what the discovery is, but suffice it to say that the religious leaders of the world are in a tizzy about it, whereupon one shadowy Knights of Malta type takes it upon himself to put a bloody end to Kirsch’s nascent heresy. Ah, but what if Kirsch had concocted an AI agent so powerful that his own death was just an inconvenience? What if it was time for not just schism, but singularity? Digging into the mystery, Langdon finds a couple of new pals, one of them that computer avatar, and a whole pack of new enemies, who, not content just to keep Kirsch’s discovery under wraps, also frown on the thought that a great many people in the modern world, including some extremely prominent Spaniards, find fascism and Falangism passé and think the reigning liberal pope is a pretty good guy. Yes, Franco is still dead, as are Christopher Hitchens, Julian Jaynes, Jacques Derrida, William Blake, and other cultural figures Brown enlists along the way—and that’s just the beginning of the body count. The old ham-fisted Brown is here in full glory (“In that instant, Langdon realized that perhaps there was a macabre silver lining to Edmond’s horrific murder”; “The vivacious, strong-minded beauty had turned Julián’s world upside down”)—but, for all his defects as a stylist, it can’t be denied that he knows how to spin a yarn, and most satisfyingly.
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-51423-1
Page Count: 461
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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