Well-plotted and written but lacking any truly original spark that would distinguish it in the increasingly crowded genre of...
Marshall’s debut imagines a near-future America in which the environment is degraded, the social fabric is unraveling, and foreign wars are never-ending. Sound familiar?
James is one of the young boys placed in the Goodhouse system when mandatory genetic testing reveals he has “certain biometric markers” common in violent criminals. Raised as wards of the state, James and his fellows are trained in “right-thinking” so they can be released at 18 to join society, though only those with Level 1 status will be fully assimilated. Meanwhile, they’re subject to the arbitrary, brutal supervision of proctors and class leaders. And recently, a group of religious fanatics called Zeros has been attacking Goodhouses, claiming the boys are unredeemable and must be killed: “Only then would the oceans teem once more with life…the weather normalize…would there be peace.” It’s a good setup, and Marshall gives us an appropriately troubled protagonist, haunted by memories of the deadly Zero attack on his former Goodhouse in Oregon. Relocated to Ione, California, James soon gets into trouble thanks to his encounter on Community Day with a civilian girl named Bethany; she’s contemptuous of the pieties James carefully utters and encourages him to break the rules. Far more dangerous than James’ attraction to Bethany is his tangled connection with her father, Dr. A.J. Cleveland, a researcher (and covert Zero ally) at the Ione Goodhouse who protects James only because he needs a guinea pig for his dangerous drug experiment. The plot moves briskly, with James and his friend Owen losing their Level 1 status and sinking into the Goodhouse depths while Zero activity becomes more aggressive, culminating in an attack on Ione. A cautiously optimistic ending offers some hope but shows this world still insecure and unjust.
Well-plotted and written but lacking any truly original spark that would distinguish it in the increasingly crowded genre of dystopian fiction starring hard-pressed young adults.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-16562-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
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
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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