A sober, personable tale about the complexities of sexual abuse and its aftermath.
Namkung (The Things We Tell Ourselves, 2015, etc.) presents a novel about a predatory English teacher and the journalists who seek to stop him.
Caryn Rodgers is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California and an intern at the Los Angeles Daily. She’s the daughter of a beauty queen and a diplomat, and her family is wealthy beyond imagination; she didn’t even know how to use a washing machine before she went to college. But her life hasn’t always been idyllic. Six years ago, during her sophomore year at the prestigious Windemere School for Girls, she found herself the target of unwanted advances from her English teacher, Dr. Gregory Copeland, who’s a beloved, longtime member of the faculty. Caryn, with the support of her boss, Jane March, decides to run a personal essay about her experience in the Daily. Her essay, “My Tenth-Grade Teacher Claims He Fell in Love With Me,” winds up causing quite a stir, and other Windemere alumnae come out of the woodwork with their own stories about Copeland. Caryn receives plenty of negative attention, as well, from Copeland’s defenders. Will there be enough evidence for a case, and will Windemere ever admit any wrongdoing? The story progresses quickly, and although some readers may find it difficult to relate to the protagonist’s wealth, other characters of other socio-economic classes help to round out the narrative. It’s through the stories of these characters that more sinister details emerge; for example, the vodka-fueled and heavily tattooed Sasha Sokoloff provides a thorough and disturbing account of her own past with Copeland. Sasha may seem like a familiar character type—a reckless, emotionally scarred beauty bouncing around Los Angeles—but readers do get the opportunity to understand where her pain comes from. A budding romance for Jane doesn’t add much to the plot; indeed, the journalist mainly just serves as a conduit for the victims’ stories. But the details and personalities of the victims, and the many risks that they face in coming forward, ultimately make the book a worthwhile read.
A sober, personable tale about the complexities of sexual abuse and its aftermath.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Griffith Moon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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