An intense novel that expertly weaves varying perspectives of a singular, life-changing event.
In Alexander’s (North of Here, 2012, etc.) gritty drama, a gunman’s standoff against police constables in a Canadian community has repercussions on numerous lives.
Patrolling the Peacefield area, constables Grant Ambler and Arnold Strauss respond to a call of a possible domestic dispute at an apartment complex. What they find when they get there, however, is an armed man, who shoots Grant while Arnold takes cover with Daniel, a young boy who lives at the complex. The man, whom Daniel calls the General, holds the boy’s mother, Lauren, hostage in his apartment; he also seems to have a limitless arsenal, repeatedly firing out his window and pinning Arnold behind a dumpster. Meanwhile, Grant’s father, Walter, and Arnold’s pregnant wife, Joanne, anxiously watch news coverage of the shooting as Grant, lying on the ground and possibly dying, envisions himself walking in the snow with an enigmatic figure named Mike, unsure of whether or not he’s in the afterlife. The author’s novel deceptively begins like a police procedural; Grant’s little brother, Ronnie, disappeared 10 years ago, the only significant evidence a report of a black car, and Arnold doesn’t seem to like a fellow constable because of the man’s presence during an incident initially referred to as “that night.” Though these two mysteries are ultimately resolved, the plot’s true focus is the General’s bullet-laden rampage, aptly revealing the ways in which it affects the people involved as well as their loved ones. Alexander relays the story through different points of view, from Lauren, who’s stuck with the General and doesn’t know if her son is safe, to Walter, who spends time with his adolescent neighbor Gavin (who supplies the older man with booze and weed) and learns about the shooting on TV. The characters are resoundingly developed and multidimensional. The General, for example, isn’t merely the crazed antagonist; he’s given a thorough, tragic back story as he speaks to Lauren. And Alexander doesn’t provide easy answers, particularly with regard to Grant, whose metaphysical state (he’s following Mike but is actually still wounded at the scene) is deliberately equivocal; Mike may be an angel, a ghost or simply a person who’s cropped up in Grant’s dream. There’s adequate resolution for every character before the story is over, but a few of the answers are left open for interpretation.
An intense novel that expertly weaves varying perspectives of a singular, life-changing event.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1926942735
Page Count: 179
Publisher: Now or Never Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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