Melissa Brown

FictionDebut Fiction

Salt water cures everything

Review by Melissa Brown

The depths of grief are like the sea, bottomless and ever widening. Maybe that’s why the protagonist of S.K. Perry’s startling debut novel moves to Brighton after the sudden death of her boyfriend, Sam. The ebb and flow of the waves echo the push-pull of Holly’s loss, the bizarre way that grief bends and cuts. The sea is an apt metaphor.

Told from Holly’s perspective, with numbered sections that span the first year since Sam’s death, Let Me Be Like Water reads as intimately as a diary or a love letter. Raw is the best word to describe it. It’s a book to be read in the same way you’d listen to a friend who’s grieving—patiently and with care. We meet Holly as she’s just moved from London to Brighton to escape her memories of Sam. She’s an ever-shifting shape, roiling with anger and then curling in a ball, missing Sam and then wanting to be held by someone else, hurting and wanting to break things.

In fluid, imaginative prose, Perry captures the tension and anger, the pain and guilt. Meeting Frank, a man with a flair for magic and a grandfatherly care for people, is the seminal moment in Holly’s process. He introduces her to, as she puts it, “his collection of broken people” and they keep her from falling too far, from fading away altogether, though she often wants to. The gifts of their friendships are many: cooking lessons that feed her, a piano that restores her to her music, a house to live in that’s full of vitality and laughter. Though occasionally the allusions Perry reaches for feel overwrought, she keeps from veering into overly sentimentalized territory.

Holly’s confusion and emptiness stings, and the moments when she embraces life bring hope. From beginning to end, the sea buoys her. “When you sit by the water it really does feel like things will be alright.”

The depths of grief are like the sea, bottomless and ever widening. Maybe that’s why the protagonist of S.K. Perry’s startling debut novel moves to Brighton after the sudden death of her boyfriend, Sam. The ebb and flow of the waves echo the push-pull of Holly’s loss, the bizarre way that grief bends and cuts. The sea is an apt metaphor.

FictionDebut Fiction

A girl blessed with prophetic gifts

Review by Melissa Brown

Grace Carter’s family doesn’t know what to make of her—or her gift. In This I Know, debut author Eldonna Edwards captures both the ordinary and extraordinary about Grace, who—aside from her clairvoyance, which she calls “the Knowing”—is a typical prepubescent girl making the perplexing transition to young womanhood. The Knowing makes her an oddity to most people but is a lifeline for some, such as those who wish to talk to a lost child or want to know the secrets of the past and future.

Grace’s mama shares her daughter’s clairvoyance, but the depression that’s been weighing on her since her sixth child’s birth, coupled with lingering grief over the loss of Grace’s twin brother, Isaac, keeps her spirit locked away. Grace’s dad’s zeal for his position as pastor of the Church of the Word obscures all else. Her three sisters have little patience for her. Her older sister Joy, ever the pragmatic one, even tries to make money off of Grace’s gift once or twice.

In a pitch-perfect voice, Edwards captures Grace’s struggles to understand the pain of those around her as she deals with her own, especially her desire to be loved unconditionally by her father. Grace displays a wellspring of compassion—for the homeless man who sometimes squats in her family’s barn, for families who have lost loved ones and especially for her mama, whom she desperately wants back from the grips of depression.

Like Grace, Edwards is the daughter of a preacher, and this write-what-you-know aspect lends This I Know a depth of feeling and honesty. Edwards’ conversational style and the first-person diaristic tone create an enveloping warmth that draws the reader in.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Grace Carter’s family doesn’t know what to make of her—or her gift. In This I Know, debut author Eldonna Edwards captures both the ordinary and extraordinary about Grace, who—aside from her clairvoyance, which she calls “the Knowing”—is a typical prepubescent girl making the perplexing transition to young womanhood.

FictionDebut Fiction

A poignant, heartfelt debut

Review by Melissa Brown

Everything changes in a couple’s life when they go from being “just us” to “we three.” Rob meets Anna at Cambridge; love and marriage ensue; and then there’s Jack. Winsome, beautiful Jack loves tall buildings, taking pictures with his very own camera and eating special cheese on toast. He is adored by his parents, who are in awe of him—after all, it was so hard to conceive.

In We Own the Sky, first-time novelist Luke Allnutt creates an arresting intimacy between this family of three. The center around which Rob and Anna now spin is Jack. Work and friends and all the rest that used to define their lives fade to the background, especially after 5-year-old Jack’s stumbles and fainting spells lead to an upending, devastating diagnosis.

From that moment, their lives are thrust into a world of hospital visits and online support forums, where Rob and Anna seek advice from parents who have been down this road before. In time, Rob and Anna start to approach Jack’s illness with very different attitudes, and the divide begins to crack them apart.

Funny, heartfelt and honest, We Own the Sky is hard to put down but equally difficult to pick back up. Allnutt excels at capturing the full range of emotion and how a single moment can crystallize your whole life—dividing it into “important” and “not important,” before and after.

When a softhearted taxi driver won’t accept Rob’s payment for their ride after yet another doctor’s visit, Allnutt writes, “Sometimes love comes from the strangest places. People don’t realize how much they can break your heart.” In writing We Own the Sky, Allnutt proves that sometimes authors don’t know their heartbreaking power either.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Everything changes in a couple’s life when they go from being “just us” to “we three.” Rob meets Anna at Cambridge; love and marriage ensue; and then there’s Jack. Winsome, beautiful Jack loves tall buildings, taking pictures with his very own camera and eating special cheese on toast. He is adored by his parents, who are in awe of him—after all, it was so hard to conceive.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Gone girls

Review by Melissa Brown

A late-season blizzard batters 1879 Albany, New York, and the blinding white seems to have swallowed up two young sisters, Emma and Claire O’Donnell. The snow cripples the city for days, and when it finally begins to melt, Emma and Claire are still missing. Not sure whether the girls are alive or dead, Drs. Mary Sutter and William Stipp, close friends of the family, cease their search and try to continue living without them. When the news of the disappearances reaches Mary’s mother, Amelia, and niece, Elizabeth, who are abroad in Paris, they return home on the next ship.

Spring comes to Albany and brings a flood as the frozen river breaks up, just as the town seems to crack in two along with it. Marriages are strained, sons grow suspicious of fathers, business dealings are not what they seem—and that’s just in the Van der Veer family, one of the city’s most prosperous. At the center of it all, the disappearance of the “winter sisters” continues to captivate Albany’s residents, from prostitutes and police to lumber barons and society matrons. Allegations swirl, and the truth eventually proves stranger than anyone had imagined—or feared.

In Winter Sisters, Robin Oliveira (My Name Is Mary Sutter) spins a long, twisting tale, mixing amended historical facts with the intrigue of a true crime drama. Though her characterizations do descend into well-trodden molds at times, her women are strength and courage personified. Many of the men (except for a phenomenal few) fall short at best and, at worst, commit reprehensible acts. But in Mary, Amelia, Elizabeth and others, Oliveira shows the tenacity of women. They rise to meet challenges with an unwavering sense of morality and duty. And Oliveira holds the reader in her thrall through each suspenseful turn.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A late-season blizzard batters 1879 Albany, New York, and the blinding white seems to have swallowed up two young sisters, Emma and Claire O’Donnell. The snow cripples the city for days, and when it finally begins to melt, Emma and Claire are still missing. Not sure whether the girls are alive or dead, Drs. Mary Sutter and William Stipp, close friends of the family, cease their search and try to continue living without them. When the news of the disappearances reaches Mary’s mother, Amelia, and niece, Elizabeth, who are abroad in Paris, they return home on the next ship.

FictionPopular Fiction

Together at the end

Review by Melissa Brown

Leaving home is a contradiction in terms; we can never truly leave behind the place that shaped us, nor the people who played a part in our molding. Never Coming Back explores that most unbreakable bond forged at home, the bond between mother and daughter.

In this emotional continuation of the story she began in Shadow Baby, Alison McGhee transports us back to the Northern woods of Sterns, New York, and the Winter women, Tamar and Clara. Clara had escaped to Florida after college and lived there for years until Tamar’s recent erratic behavior is given a name—Alzheimer’s. Early onset. Not words anyone ever wants to hear, especially someone who feels the weight of words like Clara does. As her mother’s mind and thoughts shrink, Clara’s expands with memory and feeling and unanswered questions.

In Clara’s recollections, we see Tamar before her illness took hold: acerbic and guarded, burdened by life experience as well as the choices she made that she was unable to help her daughter understand. The precocious 11-year-old Clara in Shadow Baby has turned inward, defending herself against (and because of) tragedy. Curious as a child, with a never-ending wellspring of wonderings, now-32-year-old Clara hides her deeper adult anguish behind well-chosen words, sarcastic “Jeopardy” references and a wire tattoo symbolically holding her together. Her anger at Tamar’s potential role in Clara’s breakup with Asa, her first love, fuels Clara’s initial interactions with her mother, until Clara slowly begins to see with a new perspective—someone else’s perspective, her mother’s perspective.

McGhee’s own gift for words takes you to the very heart of this tense yet tender relationship. Through vivid and meandering dips into memory, McGhee draws us into Clara’s rapidly shifting thoughts as she tries to piece together previous assumptions with new discoveries. Encouraged by her friends and Tamar’s confidante, Annabelle, Clara learns more fully the true power of words, both spoken and heard. On this journey of return, Clara finds herself on the path toward redemption, acceptance and love.

Leaving home is a contradiction in terms; we can never truly leave behind the place that shaped us, nor the people who played a part in our molding. Never Coming Back explores that most unbreakable bond forged at home, the bond between mother and daughter.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Seeking a better life

Review by Melissa Brown

Young Lilly Blackwood, hidden away since birth in her parents’ attic because of her albinism, is thrust into the role of sideshow freak. Lilly’s fanatical mother smuggles her away one night and sells her to Merrick, who runs the freak show in The Barlow Brother’s Circus. Delivered from one form of captivity into another, Lilly struggles to survive this new, confusing world. The kind embrace of the other freaks softens the cruelty from Merrick and even the “rubes” who pay to see the oddities.

In The Life She Was Given, Ellen Marie Wiseman paints two parallel portraits of women in the Blackwood family: Lilly, the daughter sold to the circus in the 1930s, and down-and-out Julia who inherits Blackwood Manor in the 1950s. As Julia attempts to blot out her childhood memories, the secrets of the Manor strain to reveal themselves to her, and she tries to make sense of the puzzle pieces of Lilly’s life. In the circus, Lilly finds a freedom unlike anything she’s ever known. Eventually, her skill with the elephants of The Barlow Brother’s Circus becomes a way for her to escape the inhumanity of the freak show and Merrick’s rage. She even finds love with a big top performer before one final gut-wrenching incident tears her new life apart.

While Wiseman excels at creating an atmosphere, there’s more telling than showing to her prose; her writing, while lively, gets bogged down in characters’ inner monologues that at times encumber the plot. Her characters are all vividly drawn and complex, especially Lilly’s abusive mother, Coralline. But at the heart of Wiseman’s tale of loss and redemption are Lilly and Julia, connected in spirit by their determination to overcome years of pain and sorrow.

Fans of Karen White and Sara Gruen will be drawn in by the drama and mystery of Wiseman’s novel.

Young Lilly Blackwood, hidden away since birth in her parents’ attic because of her albinism, is thrust into the role of sideshow freak. Lilly’s fanatical mother smuggles her away one night and sells her to Merrick, who runs the freak show in The Barlow Brother’s Circus. Delivered from one form of captivity into another, Lilly struggles to survive this new, confusing world. The kind embrace of the other freaks softens the cruelty from Merrick and even the “rubes” who pay to see the oddities.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

A quietly powerful story of two lives intertwined

Review by Melissa Brown

In the shadow of Wounded Knee, the characters in Alexandra Fuller’s debut novel strive to make, force or find their way. Life on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reads as both humorous and heartbreaking in Quiet Until the Thaw. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson are cousins, bound by shared ancestry and blood, but little else. Rick grows to appreciate and revere the ways of the land of his people, the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation; You Choose turns his back on the Rez and all it would teach him.

Fuller says much in few, well-chosen words, like the quiet Rick Overlooking Horse himself, who left the Rez to serve in Vietnam and came back burned in body but resolute in spirit. Winding through seminal events from the 1940s to the 2000s, Fuller muses on the nature of time itself, how it circles and returns, how cycles repeat themselves. You Choose wanders north, returns, becomes tribal chairman and then loses it all in a fit of rage. Rick finds his home in a meadow, tends wild horses, befriends buffalo and, late one night, becomes the caretaker for twin baby boys. A couple, Le-a Brings Plenty and Squanto, help raise them.

A nonfiction writer and memoirist, Fuller writes unhurriedly and with an economy of expression that is nonetheless evocative. Her characters’ lives and motivations—from You Choose and Rick to their guardian Mina; from Le-a and Squanto to the twin boys Jerusalem and Daniel—aren’t fully realized, but what is explored paints a vivid picture. As they search for belonging and meaning, every piece of the slowly unveiled story helps fill in the complicated puzzle of their relationships. You Choose’s and Rick’s paths meet time and time again until one last encounter, when the path of one becomes the path of the other in their seemingly fated intersection. Fuller writes: “Since all things are connected, always and for all time, there is no avoiding reunion.”

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the shadow of Wounded Knee, the characters in Alexandra Fuller’s debut novel strive to make, force or find their way. Life on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reads as both humorous and heartbreaking in Quiet Until the Thaw. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson are cousins, bound by shared ancestry and blood, but little else. Rick grows to appreciate and revere the ways of the land of his people, the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation; You Choose turns his back on the Rez and all it would teach him.

FictionDebut Fiction

An Irish village reveals its secrets

Review by Melissa Brown

Mysterious and lyrical, Jess Kidd’s first novel, Himself, introduces the inhabitants of a village in County Mayo, Ireland, after the return of its most unfortunate son. Kidd wraps readers up in her tale like a mother swaddling a child—only in this case, not for safekeeping. In the curious village of Mulderrig, nothing is as safe as it seems.

It’s April 1976. Mahony, orphaned in Dublin 26 years prior, has followed a note—penned on the back of a photograph of him and his mother—to the place of his birth and, possibly, his mother’s death. Back in 1950, the town branded his mum Orla a witch, a whore, an outcast. The many rumors about what happened to her persist, confusing Mahony in his search for truth.

Strange things begin to happen when the handsome, dark-eyed Mahony steps foot in Mulderrig. Like his mother before him, Mahony can see and talk to the dead. The town’s eccentric Mrs. Cauley senses this, as she has some otherworldly tricks up her own sleeve. To find out what happened to his mum, Mahony and the meddling Mrs. Cauley conduct interrogations of both the living and the dead. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it quickly becomes apparent that some people want Mahony gone, for good.

Moving between Mahony’s present and the village’s past, Himself is spun like a fairy tale and paced like a mystery told around a slowly fading campfire. Kidd is brilliant at setting the scene and painting it vividly with a twisted, comic voice. A Bogeyman haunts the forest, a protected island in the river only appears at low tide, and a holy well springs up in the middle of the priest’s library. Mahoney’s presence seems to trigger this and other chaos as it forces the villagers to deal with the demons they’ve tried to bury.

In Himself, the author revels in the magical and supernatural, deftly and often humorously melding superstition and folklore with real personal tragedy.

Mysterious and lyrical, Jess Kidd’s first novel, Himself, introduces the inhabitants of a village in County Mayo, Ireland, after the return of its most unfortunate son. Kidd wraps readers up in her tale like a mother swaddling a child—only in this case, not for safekeeping. In the curious village of Mulderrig, nothing is as safe as it seems.

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionScience Fiction

The astronaut and the spider

Review by Melissa Brown

When a comet drive-by leaves a cloud of purple dust in space, altering the familiar view from Earth, the collective response of the nations, of course, is to reach it: to explore, collect, research. The Czechs rocket a man to the Chopra cloud first, sending professor of astrophysics Jakub Procházka as their first astronaut. Thus Spaceman of Bohemia begins with a proud achievement for a country so battered by the machinations of others, now making momentous history of its own. 

Several weeks after Jakub’s solitary launch, a (possibly imaginary) memory-probing space spider appears aboard the JanHus1 space shuttle. The spider, whom Jakub names Hanuš after a medieval astronomical clock maker from Prague, probes his thoughts and eats his Nutella in his own scientific exploration to learn about “humanry.” Jakub unearths his childhood fears surrounding the fall of the Communist Party, who his father informed for, and memories: his move to Prague with his grandparents to start anew, his chance first meeting with wife Lenka over whiskey and sausages, their consuming love affair. Now, however, they are estranged, literally, by space and time, and maybe something more permanent. As Jakub travels farther into the depths of space, he reminisces and philosophizes with Hanuš. Themes of freedom, death, the fleetingness of life, violence, oppression, lust and love, revenge, legacy and fear link together the memories along his life’s path, from his youth through his university years and the now fateful decision to become the Spaceman of Bohemia.

Set in a not-so-distant 2018, the first novel by Czech-American author Jaroslav Kalfař defies neat categorization. It is both an adoring ode to and an insider’s critique of the land of Bohemia, chronicling its past subjugations and future possibilities. It’s irreverent and thoughtful, tragic and comic, deadpan and poignant. Writing outside his native tongue, the author creates vivid, occasionally disturbing vignettes. Spaceman Jakub’s rhetorical questions do become tedious at points in the novel; at times, his wonderings overwhelm, making it hard for the reader to digest one round before Kalfař moves on to other musings. Though the narrative seems to come full circle, it felt slightly unfinished, abruptly truncated. These caveats, and my personal arachnophobia aside, Spaceman of Bohemia entertains and enlightens.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When a comet drive-by leaves a cloud of purple dust in space, altering the familiar view from Earth, the collective response of the nations, of course, is to reach it: to explore, collect, research. The Czechs rocket a man to the Chopra cloud first, sending professor of astrophysics Jakub Procházka as their first astronaut. Thus Spaceman of Bohemia begins with a proud achievement for a country so battered by the machinations of others, now making momentous history of its own. 

FictionDebut Fiction

A Civil War story of the ones left behind

Review by Melissa Brown

It’s fitting for a Civil War-era story to be told in letters: The excruciating wait between each hoped-for missive is mirrored in this debut novel’s slow and gradual denouement. Author and playwright Susan Rivers employs not only letters, but also diary entries and inquest reports to tell a story loosely based in fact. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Placidia Fincher, young and newly wed to a major in the Confederate army, is jailed and accused of adultery and infanticide. Her husband has been away for two years, adding to the intrigue. Only Placidia and her few slaves, particularly one named Achilles, know what transpired. 

As attested to in an author’s note, Rivers’ research has been thorough, and she writes convincingly in a mid 19th-century style and mindset. She is adept at creating arresting imagery and constructs a stark contrast between the life of privilege Placidia left and the life of struggle she comes to upon marrying the major, moving to his remote farm, and mothering Charlie, his son by his first wife. After only two days as husband and wife, the major is called back to the front, and his “fair girl” Placidia must run the farm and protect the homestead. 

Passages relating to what Placidia and others suffer build slowly and unfold in painstaking detail, making them all the more appalling. The cruelty in a world besieged by war is hard to fully comprehend. Men fought on battlefields, but everyone at home was fighting, too—to survive. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Rivers gives readers an illuminating glimpse into a part of our country’s past that still has repercussions in the present.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook

It’s fitting for a Civil War-era story to be told in letters: The excruciating wait between each hoped-for missive is mirrored in this debut novel’s slow and gradual denouement. Author and playwright Susan Rivers employs not only letters, but also diary entries and inquest reports to tell a story loosely based in fact. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Placidia Fincher, young and newly wed to a major in the Confederate army, is jailed and accused of adultery and infanticide.

FictionHistorical Fiction

The unbreakable bond of twins

Review by Melissa Brown

The depth of the atrocities committed against the Jewish people during and after World War II seems bottomless, never to be fully probed. In Mischling, the culmination of years of research, author Affinity Konar weaves an intensely emotional tale of sisters caught in the horrific experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele.

It’s 1944. Pearl and Stasha Zagorski, yellow-haired, brown-eyed, 12-year-old twins, are ushered through Auschwitz’s forbidding gates with their mother and grandfather. Because they are twins, the girls are singled out and sent to Mengele’s Zoo, along with other multiples and those with genetic mutations. There, Mengele both gives and takes life, affording his special subjects “privileges” such as extra food while injecting them and extracting from them at will. From caging his subjects and performing forced hysterectomies and abortions, to separating twins to study the effects of deprivation on the previously inseparable, the cruelty of the so-called “Angel of Death” is boundless. After months of sleeping next to Stasha in their narrow bunk, Pearl disappears from a concert Mengele arranges. 

Told in alternating chapters, Mischling portrays each girl’s unique expression of her experience. Stasha is the more impulsive and imaginative of the two, while Pearl’s thoughtful approach is more rational and measured. The brokenness they endure and their longing for one another are captured in painful detail, and Konar is unflinching in her portrayal of Mengele’s experiments. Glimmers of light in this darkness are faint but persistent, and the unspeakable horrors are tempered with some grace, namely in Dr. Miri, a Jewish doctor who tries to ease the children’s suffering.

Though Konar’s work is fiction, her research into historical figures and accounts helped form the key characters and episodes within it. Her writing bears a pointed edge, but also has a striking cadence that is often beautiful and poetic. Despite their deplorable circumstances, the twins preserve a 12-year-old’s mix of naïveté and developing awareness. The games, memories and fantasies they share propel Pearl and Stasha onward, to find each other and embrace the world again.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The depth of the atrocities committed against the Jewish people during and after World War II seems bottomless, never to be fully probed. In Mischling, the culmination of years of research, author Affinity Konar weaves an intensely emotional tale of sisters caught in the horrific experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele.
FictionComic Fiction

The saving grace of dogs

Review by Melissa Brown

They say dogs are man’s best friend and good judges of character, to boot. In Jonathan Unleashed, the title character finds out all that and more about his brother James’ dogs, who come to live with him when James moves to Dubai.

Freshly ensconced in his first “real-world” job, Jonathan welcomes the companionship of Sissy and Dante. Compared to his own fumbling quest for self-knowledge, the cocker spaniel and border collie seem to be wise and all-knowing. Jonathan hits more lows than highs, especially once his girlfriend, Julie, moves in. Among her many defining traits, Julie doesn’t care for dogs. As their relationship accelerates toward an imminent live-stream wedding, Jonathan deteriorates. It’s up to the dogs to save him. 

In Jonathan Unleashed, National Book Award finalist Meg Rosoff captures both the existential and mundane, the ridiculous and absurd of the young urbanite making his way in New York City. Her writing is quick and entertaining, creating scene after vivid scene much like the comic book masterpiece Jonathan labors over at night, after his day job writing ad copy for an office supply store. His neuroses are laughable but also, in a sense, universal. What are we doing with our lives? Why are we part of the relationships we are in? Rosoff’s tale feels reminiscent of movies like 500 Days of Summer, full of friends who give sage but unheeded advice, hipster clichés, roller-coaster self-reflection and improbable escapades at every turn.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

They say dogs are man’s best friend and good judges of character, to boot. In Jonathan Unleashed, the title character finds out all that and more about his brother James’ dogs, who come to live with him when James moves to Dubai.
FictionDebut Fiction

A mother and daughter torn apart

Review by Melissa Brown

At a crowded outdoor book fair, a mother and daughter are separated. In the I-turned-around-and-she-was-gone of a parent’s nightmares, 8-year-old Carmel vanishes. Did Carmel, whose teacher calls her “dreamy,” try to get lost? Or did the fears of her recently divorced mother, Beth, cause it to happen? These questions tear at mother and daughter as they navigate unfamiliar, foreboding territory. 

In The Girl in the Red Coat, which made the shortlist for the Costa First Novel Award after its publication in the U.K., Welsh writer Kate Hamer seamlessly alternates between the perspectives of mother and daughter, capturing the ongoing effects of a tragedy in stark detail. Struggling to describe her daughter’s hair to police, Beth finally settles on the exact color of a brown paper envelope, believing that if she can just be detailed and precise enough, that will bring Carmel back. Hamer pinpoints the moments that take on a painful poignancy after a loss: Beth walking past Carmel’s school; seeing the red shoes Carmel wanted in a shop window; realizing the first time she went a minute without thinking of her daughter. 

Hamer also thoroughly inhabits the voice of young Carmel, who is at once both childlike and preternaturally endowed. Taken by a man with a fanatical agenda, she is a pawn in a game she doesn’t understand. The author lets the reader linger in uncertainty and frustration as Carmel’s rescue seems further and further away. The tension builds, making the book one you want to finish, but also can’t bear to keep reading. As Beth marks the time—day 1, day 7, day 51, day 100—we hope, worry, fear, trust and doubt with her and Carmel. The Girl in the Red Coat is an engrossing, smart, well-paced read that surprises until the end.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At a crowded outdoor book fair, a mother and daughter are separated. In the I-turned-around-and-she-was-gone of a parent’s nightmares, 8-year-old Carmel vanishes. Did Carmel, whose teacher calls her “dreamy,” try to get lost? Or did the fears of her recently divorced mother, Beth, cause it to happen? These questions tear at mother and daughter as they navigate unfamiliar, foreboding territory.

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