A delightfully eerie tale led by a likable and steadfast protagonist.
In this debut supernatural novel, a woman’s life in Vancouver turns into a whirlwind of romantic encounters, nightmares of demons, and strange voices inside her home.
Cali Stenson, 24, isn’t exactly fond of her temp job in customer service at Tony’s Furniture Giant. But some promising events happen all at once. She gets a promotion to a permanent gig, makes friends with a few colleagues, and learns that her aloof boss, Sean Stock, may actually be disguising his attraction to her. But while things are looking up at work, her modest house, where she lives with her female cat, Dallas, is a source of agitation. For most of her life, Cali has been plagued by “weird stuff”—unknown voices, recurrent nightmares, and unexplained occurrences, such as lights turning on by themselves. Moving from her childhood home in Toronto to Vancouver hasn’t changed anything, and lately she’s having trouble distinguishing dreams from memories or reality. Soon she is seeing visions, like someone in her backyard, and has reason to believe some dreams are premonitions. There seems to be a threat from the red-eyed demon in her nightmares, but as it turns out, the greatest danger facing Cali may be human and closer than she knows. Cali’s first-person perspective is rife with vivid details, such as lengthy scenes at Tony’s Furniture that center on Cali and Sean’s developing relationship. But this suits Marie’s novel, which is an engrossing hodgepodge of supernatural episodes, from ghostly figures to unnerving dreams with people Cali knows (for example, her sister). Moreover, the highlighted romance is complicated by Deacon Hall, a manufacturer’s rep with an unveiled interest in Cali. Despite her burdens, Cali is a self-assured woman. The story’s only flaw is occasionally trite dialogue or narration (“But I was a grown-ass woman now”). Fortunately, this hardly affects a number of genuinely nail-biting moments, like a dream demon grabbing Cali’s ankles and dragging her off the sofa.
A delightfully eerie tale led by a likable and steadfast protagonist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5255-3119-4
Page Count: 193
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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