Daisy Darker's family is the epitome of dysfunctional - secrets, lies and grudges galore. So when they come together at Nana's island home for a rare gathering to celebrate her 80th birthday, tension is to be expected. What isn't expected, however, is murder. But at midnight, Nana is found dead, and father Frank follows an hour later. Unable to leave the island until the tide goes out in the morning, the remaining family members are left in terror, wondering who is to blame for the killings and who will be next. A series of clues left by the killer also forces them to rehash family drama and trauma, including the often isolating treatment of narrator Daisy due to a rare illness. This homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None is hard to put down. The family dynamics are gripping and relatable; as secrets are revealed, you alternate between sympathy and contempt for each of the characters. And then as morning approaches, and the number of remaining family members dwindles, the killer comes to light. The stunning disclosure, coupled with a twist that made me re-read earlier parts of the book, left me reeling. The ending was unpredictable and upended my feelings about certain characters to the point where I wondered "did the villain have a good reason?" I recommend this book to anyone who likes a good mystery or is enthralled by stories of difficult families and situations.
0 Comments
When 15-year-old Bee's mother goes missing, she's not content with her father's answer that it's "complicated" and not her fault. When she gets her hands on a thick envelope of documents including emails, journal entries, receipts, and an FBI file, Bee is determined to find out what really happened. What she discovers is shocking, heartbreaking, snarky, sweet, silly and relatable all at once. In a novel told through these found documents, with occasional interjections by Bee, we discover the answer to the title question Where'd You Go, Bernadette? We learn about a quirky family that lives in a house that must be weed-whacked on the inside, one that plans a trip to Antarctica because Bee gets straight As, one whose dinner reservations are made by a virtual assistant based in India (thus leading to the FBI file). We also learn about a creative woman who can't recover from crushed dreams, her genius husband who throws himself into work to escape reality, and their uniquely gifted daughter who loves her family despite its eccentricities and flaws. Written by Maria Semple, the book is a quick read. It's hard not to be drawn into the lives of Bee, Bernadette, Elgie and the rest of the quirky cast of characters. This seems to be the era of buzzy fiction thrillers with very dysfunctional characters and wild plot twists. Gone Girl, written in 2012 by Gillian Flynn and released last year as a movie, started the trend with the crazy story of Nick and his “missing” wife Amy. The Dinner, a 2013 book by Herman Koch about two couples in denial about a terrible crime committed by their sons, is another one. Told by untrustworthy narrators, with whole chapters that you later realize were distorted if not outright lies, the reader is unsure what to believe for most of the book. Yet, you keep reading, even though the main characters are kind of jerks, because you just HAVE to know what’s going on. And when you finish the book, usually after a series of late nights staying up reading into the wee hours or long days of not putting down the book except to use the bathroom, you’re haunted and maybe a little disturbed. The Girl on the Train is a similarly messed-up book. In some ways, the comparisons to Gone Girl have created a huge fan base for this 2014 book. But in other ways, the hype has hurt, with some readers feeling that The Girl on the Train was a letdown after Gone Girl shattered expectations as well as norms of the fiction genre. I am not one of those readers. I loved both books, even as I loathed some of the characters. As I read The Girl on the Train, I ignored chores around the house, work I had brought home, even my poor daughter’s pleas for attention just so I could race to the end (Worst. Mother. Ever). Rachel, a divorced alcoholic, fills the void in her life by imagining the lives of the people she sees outside her train window. When something terrible happens, she’s not sure what she’s seen and what she’s done, and the reader struggles along with her to piece things together. The puzzle gets even more jumbled when the author writes from the point of view of two other characters: Anna, who is the new wife of Rachel’s ex-husband, and Megan, one of the people she’d been observing whose disappearance Rachel is trying to unravel. About three-quarters through the book, I got a sense of what was really going on and I had to go back and re-read some earlier parts. I spotted the author’s trickery then and thought it was pretty clever. The comparisons to Gone Girl are apt: very flawed characters that you are drawn to even though you don’t like them, a plot that seems to be one thing but turns out to be something else. And like Gone Girl, after I finished reading, I couldn’t exactly say it was a pleasant experience. But I did enjoy it, the way I enjoy the the combination of fear, disgust and thrill I get from riding a roller coaster. It turned my stomach at times, but it also got my pulse racing. Many of us, at one time or another, have wished we could be someone else: someone cooler, smarter, better looking, more popular, whatever. But would we be crazy enough -- or, as some people might say, brave enough -- to just walk away from everything we know and reinvent ourselves? After high school junior Christopher Creed disappears, leaving only a cryptic note, the community is left to wonder if he ran away, killed himself or was murdered. Everyone has their own version of what happened. Classmates who saw Chris as an obnoxious weirdo and a target for bullies had no trouble believing he committed suicide even though no body had been found. His parents, certain Chris had been happy and and would never hurt himself or run away, began looking for someone to blame. His neighbor Ali, who saw things from her bedroom window that others didn't know, wasn't sure if Chris was dead or alive but was convinced his parents had played a part. The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci explores not just a teen's mysterious disappearance but also how one event can ricochet throughout a community. It highlights how gossip, rumors and a belief in reputation over fact can have dangerous consequences. The main character, Torey Adams, is one of the students who paid little attention to Chris Creed -- except for the time he punched Chris for touching his guitar (seems most of the boys in Chris' class have their own memory of punching him). But after Chris disappears, Torey starts to feel guilty about the careless rumors and insensitive jokes of his friends and their parents. With the help of Ali and Bo, a kid from the "wrong side" of town whose police record makes him a suspect in Chris' disappearance, Torey begins tracking down clues in hopes of solving the mystery. As the belief that Chris may have run away to create a new identity takes hold in Torey's mind, he comes to the realization that everyone, no matter their reputation or differences, deserves some compassion. The climax in an Indian burial ground is as surprising as it is terrifying, but still leaves more questions than answers. I recommend this book to mystery lovers, who will enjoy putting the pieces together as they are revealed bit by bit in flashbacks. But I also think all readers can relate to the gossip mill that is high school, and the pressures from parents and peers on teens that don't fit in. The book is 276 pages long but not a difficult read. Sixteen-year-old Lydia Lee appears to have it all. She spends hours on the phone each evening, talking to friends. She dives into advanced science classes in the hopes of one day becoming a doctor. She's polite to her parents, agreeing to their every request without so much as a grumble or complaint. But, as her family is soon to find out, picture-perfect Lydia is only an illusion. When she goes missing and is found dead, drowned in a local lake, her family struggles to understand what happened. They eventually realize that everything they thought they knew about Lydia was wrong. In Everything I Never Told You, author Celeste Ng explores what it's like to be a minority. Lydia's father was the only Chinese-American student in all of his schools growing up. Her white mother was the sole woman pursuing a medical degree in a time most people thought women went to college only to catch a husband. Their biracial marriage in the 1950s was rare, and in some states, illegal. In the town where Lydia grew up in the 1970s, there is no one outside of her family who looks like her. In all of their experiences, being the minority meant facing taunts, isolation and limited opportunities. Those limited opportunities haunted Lydia's parents, who transferred all of their hopes and dreams onto her. Lydia struggled under the weight of their expectations, creating a public face that masked her unhappiness and insecurity. While readers are shown what is going through each character's mind -- during the current investigation into Lydia's death and in the decades before -- it is clear that the family members never shared their experiences and feelings with one another. If they had, maybe they could have helped one another. Or maybe they would have been further weighed down with guilt and shame. We'll never know. And while readers learn what Lydia was thinking the night she died, her parents and siblings never do. They are left with countless questions that they will never be able to answer. This is not a happy book, but it is an interesting one. Reading about the experiences of Lydia and her family through their eyes brought home the challenges faced by anyone who feels isolated or unaccepted because of their race, religion or sexual orientation. Some of us will never experience this firsthand. Books like this help us better understand what others may be going through. Another plus is that the book is written like a mystery, with the opening line telling us "Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet." Pieces of the puzzle are slowly revealed as the author alternates between present time and the past. I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes realistic fiction about families or mysteries that aren't necessarily about detectives and crimes. Fans of Ellen Hopkins' books may also like this. Even though it is not written in verse, it is the same kind of story of dysfunctional families and survivors of tragedy that Hopkins often writes about.
|
AuthorMrs. McHugh is a librarian and instructional technology specialist. She loves talking books and pop culture with her students at Hanover High School. Archives
February 2024
Categories
All
|