by Olivia Sudjic ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 2017
An intriguing premise delivered in turgid prose.
A first-time novelist considers identity and obsession in the digital age.
Alice Hare is no longer quite herself—not that she ever had much of a self to begin with. Having been abandoned by her father, she has no one but her mother, a woman who is possessive, secretive, and manipulative. As she tries to piece together her own history, Alice becomes fixated on the period of her life she and her parents spent in Japan. A baby at the time, she has no memories of this sojourn, so she's free to invent. Eventually, this attempt to fabricate an identity turns into an intense fascination with the author Mizuko Himura, whom Alice comes to know in real life after stalking her via social media. This would make a great premise for a thriller, but it’s quite evident Sudjic has more literary ambitions. The result is a story that's hard to follow even though it moves at an incredibly slow pace. One difficulty is that it moves around in time, and disparate episodes don’t build on each other so much as they expose how much the reader doesn’t know. This might make stylistic sense for a novel about a young woman tortured by the lacunae in her own life, but it’s dissatisfying and disorienting. For example, the novel begins with Alice being shut out by Mizuko, and then it shifts into a long stretch dominated by letters from Alice’s paternal grandmother. We learn about Alice’s gap year in Japan after she graduated from university, and her momentous first evening with Mizuko happens without any description of how and why Alice became infatuated with her. Another example: Alice makes passing mention of her “boyfriend at that time,” which comes as a shock since this is not only the first we’re hearing of a romantic entanglement of any kind in her life ever, but it’s also the first hint that she’s made any new relationships at all since her move from England to New York. It doesn’t help that Alice’s real-world connection to Mizuko relies on a preposterous series of coincidences.
An intriguing premise delivered in turgid prose.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-83659-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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by Christina Lauren ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2018
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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