The themes strain under too much emotional exposition.
After a brutal climate apocalypse, a young mother undertakes an odyssey.
It's been five years since most of the Earth’s population was killed by a “plastic dust storm,” a disaster that threw microplastics from the oceans straight into human lungs. Katie survives in a suburb of London, foraging for berries and roots and trapping stray cats. Harry, her young son, has never left their apartment (Outside is alien enough to warrant a capital O). But Katie’s lungs are failing, and when she finds a hidden letter from the fiance she'd assumed to be dead, she takes Harry on a journey that will lead them to the northern reaches of Scotland. She hopes her fiance, a military veteran named Jack, can raise Harry after she, too, succumbs to the dust. Many of the survivors she meets along the way are menacing, and she struggles to trust even those who deserve it, like Andy and Sue, an older couple who have taken up together after losing their families in the storm. Leaving aside the plausibility of death by microplastics, many of Katie’s concerns seem contemporary. Characters wonder whether it's safe to leave their homes and lecture each other over wearing face masks. Katie’s struggle to be a good mother, especially in a catastrophe, is poignant. But Harry, until the novel’s final act, exists mostly to regurgitate Katie’s anxieties back at her. “Why didn’t you sleep with me?” he asks after an overnight foraging expedition. “What if I couldn’t wake up and I needed you?” Much of the novel is similarly overdetermined; a flashback to a precatastrophe self-defense class leads directly into a scene where Katie must put those skills to use. Jackson's debut novel is stronger when it's surprising, as in the scenes where Katie muses on the strange beauty of the new world.
The themes strain under too much emotional exposition.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780385548434
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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