Adroit in its storytelling, this book offers two finely drawn lives and a continuing mystery as to how they will overlap.
A debut novel focuses on one man and the many possibilities in life.
Luke Morrow is a lovable loser. An advertising account executive who bet everything on an Internet startup––only to lose his marriage, reputation, and career in the process––he ekes out an existence in Southern California. His main joy in life comes from moments with his son, Trevor, a boy who loves nothing more than a day at the Manhattan Beach Dunes. As income concerns force Luke to downgrade his apartment (which requires him to euthanize his tropical fish, following the advice that it is best “to throw them hard onto the sidewalk, killing them instantly”) and pursue work far below his accustomed pay scale, will he ever rebuild his life? Just as he is at his lowest, the reader is introduced, thanks to a supernatural occurrence, to a very different Luke. What if instead of lovable, he was ruthless? An alternative Luke still possesses a history that encompasses a divorce and a son named Trevor, though differing circumstances allow the protagonist to gorge himself at the buffet of the superrich. From private jets to call girls to a nanny whose breast implants he pays for, this Luke is certainly successful, though hardly even likable. So will the real Luke Morrow please stand up? The author adeptly paints very detailed profiles of both Lukes, and readers should feel very much in the moment, whether the nice Luke is offering his old weight lifting gloves to a homeless veteran or the crass one is waiting impatiently to receive his new yacht. Though moments of the wealthy Luke’s life can become repetitive, such as a trip to Hawaii that carries the reader along for a catamaran ride and snorkeling with “red dragon wrasses and purple-tipped tangs,” the curious will wonder how it all ends. Surely somewhere between these contrasting Lukes, there lies an important lesson. Tightly written and as believable (in terms of characterization) as it is ostentatious (in terms of overall construct), the novel should cause many readers to fervently seek what that lesson might be.
Adroit in its storytelling, this book offers two finely drawn lives and a continuing mystery as to how they will overlap.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Aqueous Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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