THE OXENBURG WOMAN

Mann offers a slow-burning espionage thriller set at the intersection of high-tech power and personal vulnerability.

Suzanna Oxenburg appears to be living a secluded life in her modern home on the outskirts of the Arizona desert. Her husband, a database specialist, is off on another work trip in Brazil for a health-education program. She appears stuck in an isolated routine, working a tedious, mostly remote job as a database analyst with an overbearing boss in a neighborhood built on privacy—and without cell phone towers. While taking her German shepherd out for a walk during a desert storm, she stumbles across an armed man on the ground; he’s been shot. The perspective then shifts to the man in question, a caustic character who’s utterly suspicious of his rescuer’s seemingly random act of kindness. Although the prose teeters toward an enemies-to-lovers dynamic, it quickly establishes an ambivalent tension around the characters’ motives, as well as the circumstances surrounding their meeting. The man, wounded but refusing treatment, soon coerces Suzanna into a variety of peculiar tasks, including cleaning his clothes and even attending a wedding under his militant supervision. From there, the storyline sends the pair in different directions before bringing them back together to resolve the fragmented pieces of the story. Mann’s dialogue shines through—at its strongest, it’s bitter and comical (“How had he ever stumbled into this hornet’s nest of suburbia?”) with some well-placed one-liners. The opening’s desolate Arizona backdrop also powerfully establishes an atmosphere of isolation: “She dressed, as usual, at the windows, although her view was hidden by clouds this morning.” The evocative setting later falters, struggling to sustain the same level of seamless integration into the narrative, although the anxiousness of the characters and the looming influence of technologies carry a feeling of unease to the end.

An often-riveting exploration of power and the antiheroes in its service.