An engrossing exploration of an intimate horror.
A woman struggles with a violent relationship that is foreshadowed by a mysterious, century-old diary in this thriller by the author of Nights of Indigo Blue (2016).
When Maggie Fuentes, a nurse at a Brooklyn hospital who lives on Coney Island, tries to break up with her boyfriend, Frank Ramirez—a publicly charming, privately abusive cop—the result is a tirade capped by a blow to her head that temporarily knocks her out. In the aftermath, she is plagued by pounding headaches, dizziness, and a growing sense of disorientation. At work, she is saddled with an emotionally unsettling patient who is semiconscious after attempting suicide. Meanwhile, Frank continues his menacing control, mixing protestations of love with callous insults and threats that leave her too frightened to seek legal protection. A few bright spots ease Maggie’s despondency without solving her problems. One is a handsome intern whose interest culminates in torrid trysts but no substantial relationship. Then there are the drugs, including painkillers, that Maggie swipes from patients; marijuana; and black-tar heroin, which makes her so mellow after she smokes it that she manages to fall back in love with Frank. Her self-medication helps her cope but also deepens her loss of autonomy. Maggie’s predicament is paralleled by the entries in a diary she finds at a flea market, written by a servant girl beginning in 1903. Like Maggie, Ellen is trapped by brutal, domineering men and seeks solace in gazing at the moon over the Coney Island beach until a friendship with a fortuneteller prompts her to try to take back her life. As Maggie starts having hallucinations, her identification with Ellen grows so strong that she feels the servant’s spirit entering her and transporting her back in time to a masked ball.
Varela’s haunting tale is in part a superbly realistic evocation of Maggie’s downward spiral that turns darkly claustrophobic as her grip on reality loosens. The hospital scenes are well observed and full of absorbing procedural detail. The rendering of Maggie’s relationship with Frank is vivid and appalling as she negotiates the minefield of his hair-trigger temper and paranoid—sometimes not so paranoid—jealousies. (At one point, he carefully sniffs her to detect evidence of a betrayal, then administers a beating.) The author’s psychologically shrewd prose—“While I was relieved that I hadn’t heard from him,” Maggie muses of Frank, “I was also somewhat annoyed. I hated when he ignored me”—conveys a complex, nuanced portrait of domestic violence. Frank is monstrous but has his own history of childhood abuse. Maggie makes dangerous compromises, finding his domination reassuring and even arousing when it doesn’t terrify her. The novel’s supernatural elements are less compelling. Ellen’s diaristic narrative is threadbare and doesn’t add much to Maggie’s experiences. In addition, Maggie’s visions feel out of place as they become more psychedelic. (“He cut the air around me and a glistening dark-blue snake slithered out of my body,” Maggie observes during an encounter with the Archangel Michael.) There are third-act problems and a misfiring climax as the tale’s spiritual high point weakens the impact of Maggie’s real-world travails. Still, Varela’s portrayal of Maggie’s ordeal is a tour de force in its depiction of a battered woman struggling to recover her mind and soul.
An engrossing exploration of an intimate horror.Pub Date: May 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73271-671-1
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Pollen Press Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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