The lead-up to and aftermath of a commercial jet crash are seen from the perspectives of many people whose lives the tragedy touches.
Kistulentz's debut novel begins at the Salt Lake City airport on New Year’s Eve 2000—“the last day of the last year when we still felt safe”—with an unhappy 48-year-old airline mechanic who makes a mistake in the preflight check of a 727, preoccupied with getting home to his wife to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Though the crash won't actually occur until the following afternoon, its utter devastation is described in this chapter, “soot and ash and oozing plastic and blood spatter, the implied presence of human remains.” This choice trades in some of the suspense of the situation for a heart-wrenching certainty about the outcome for several of the characters, of which there are many, though some only get a chapter or two—for example, a kid who films the crash, various airport employees, members of the airline’s Adam and Eve teams who go out to notify the next of kin. The central cast member among the passengers is Mary Beth Blumenthal, a single mother who's left her 6-year-old son home in Texas with a co-worker so she and her boss can spend the weekend together in a Salt Lake City hotel, though she's still wondering why he chose Utah. Her brother, a Washington, D.C.–based television pundit named Richard MacMurray, who presumably will be inheriting her orphaned son, is followed even more closely than Mary Beth, including very detailed chapters on his career options and love life, including even the post-breakup sexual adventures of his ex-girlfriend. These chapters seem marginal to the main concerns of the book and, once the crash has occurred, verge on tastelessness. Though Kistulentz confidently sets up and populates the panorama of the book's title, there’s a paint-by-numbers quality to his depiction of his characters’ emotions that keeps the reader at arm’s length when we should be most swept up.
This book has the architecture of a great novel but falls short in the execution. A writer worth watching.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55176-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
Did you like this book?
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. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE
Did you like this book?
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
GET IT
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
PROFILES
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
