Part mystery, part love story, part horror story, this debut novel lingers like a vivid dream.
Four darkly compelling storylines converge in Florschutz’s debut novel.
On a dark, rainy night in early November, John Brisdon Noxon, a middle-aged art curator, disappears. His wife, Imogen, finds his hidden journals, including one detailing Brisdon’s trip to Peru as a young student—and his passionate affair with a local artist, César, which ended in tragedy. Each journal entry is addressed to Karen, Brisdon’s twin sister, who disappeared when the siblings were 5 years old. Fifteen years later, Imogen and her partner, Max, gather their family around them to commemorate the closing of their lakeside resort, the Sheltering Arms. That weekend, the mysteries of Brisdon’s disappearance—and of his sister’s—are illuminated in a series of haunting revelations. The novel weaves together four points of view: Brisdon as a young man lived in the shadow of his sister’s disappearance and haunted by the death of his parents in a plane crash. In Peru, he falls in love with César Acosta, heedless of the dangerous political climate, and is devastated by the atrocity that tears them apart. César, haunted by the same memories (and harboring a few secrets of his own), transforms into the reclusive artist CÁLA. Margaret, Brisdon’s Scottish mother (once a lively young woman, now a disturbed, paranoid personality), details the events leading up to the disappearance of her daughter. Finally, Imogen, surrounded by her loved ones, is left to pick up the pieces the others have left behind. The four storylines frequently overlap, and several scenes are depicted more than once from different perspectives; as in Rashomon, instead of feeling redundant, the repetitions add depth and nuance. The settings, ranging from postwar Scotland to rural Peru to a remote Ontario lake, provide evocative, moody backdrops for the story. “As we drove on, Lima felt ominous in the dim light–a polluted, dry, decaying insomniac of a metropolis.” The characters baffle and infuriate, like real people, and the unlikely series of coincidences at the end add to the uncanny, mystical feel.
Part mystery, part love story, part horror story, this debut novel lingers like a vivid dream.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781990496271
Page Count: 400
Publisher: AOS Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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