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Trisha Ping

FictionPopular Fiction

What to read after ‘Me Before You’

Feature by Trisha Ping

So you’re a fan of Jojo Moyes’ best-selling, tear-jerking 2012 release, Me Before You. This story of the relationship between down-and-out Louisa Clark and the wealthy, quadriplegic she becomes a caregiver for is as touching and warm as it is thought-provoking, making it a perfect fit for book clubs.

Other than tearing through Moyes’ backlist (she’s published more than 10 other books) what’s a Me Before You fan to do next? Not to worry: BookPage has some ideas.

(Warning: minor plot spoilers; after all, this is for those who have already read Me Before You!)

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

OK, so this one might not be much of a surprise, but no one does the ethical dilemma novel™ better than Picoult, and My Sister’s Keeper is one of her most controversial. If debating right to life/quality of life issues was what turned you on about Me Before You, give this one a whirl. Read it already? Go for the not-yet-adapted-for-film Second Glance.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Speaking of medical ethics . . . best-selling author Gawande may not write novels, but his essays on the challenges of medicine, especially when it comes to drawing the line between treatment and quality of life, certainly make for compelling reading. Anyone who came out of Me Before You with questions about the medical issues involved should pick up this sensitive new collection that will leave you wiser.

Love Water Memory by Jennie Shortridge

One of the most compelling storylines in Me Before You was Lou’s journey of self-discovery—the way she realizes there’s more to who she can be. Shortridge’s fifth novel offers a more extreme version of that theme. It’s the story of Lucie Walker, who awakens in the San Francisco Bay with no idea who she is or how she got there. Worse, she doesn’t recognize the handsome man who shows up claiming to be her fiancé.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

If the “odd-couple” dynamic between Louisa and Will was your favorite part of Me Before You, don’t miss The Rosie Project, last year’s word-of-mouth hit that chronicled the romance between a professor who is logical to a fault and a whimsical, fun-loving bartender who comes to him for help finding her biological father. 

Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

So you liked Me Before You because it was a tear-jerker? Try Maria de los Santos, especially the poignant Belong to Me, which follows a 30-something who is dying of cancer.

(More obvious runner-ups in the tear-jerker category: The Time-Traveler’s Wife, The Fault in Our Stars.)

Someone Else’s Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

One of the themes of Me Before You is appreciating the joy to be found in life, no matter what your situation might be. In Jackson’s compassionate sixth novel, Someone Else’s Love Story, her heroine Shandi has to do just that, even as she uncovers some uncomfortable truths about her life and meets the equally wounded, but less resiliant, William.

So you’re a fan of Jojo Moyes’ best-selling, tear-jerking 2012 release, Me Before You. This story of the relationship between down-and-out Louisa Clark and the wealthy, quadriplegic she becomes a caregiver for is as touching and warm as it is thought-provoking, making it a perfect fit for book clubs. Other than tearing through Moyes’ backlist (she’s published […]
Children's & YAPicture Book

Stopping to taste the gingersnaps

Review by Trisha Ping

Sweet and spicy gingersnaps make the world a better place. Or at least, they’re a starting point in Mara Rockliff’s second picture book, The Busiest Street in Town. Agatha May Walker wants to bring some cookies to her neighbor Eulalie, but when she starts to cross the street, the speeding traffic on Rushmore Boulevard won’t stop for her: cars and trucks just keep on roaring, zipping and rumbling past (the frequent use of onomatopoeia makes this a fun read-aloud).

Undaunted, Agatha carries out her yellow wingback chair and becomes a human roadblock, forcing traffic to slow down around her and offering gingersnaps to the passing drivers. Soon Eulalie joins her, bearing a piano stool, a card table and a Parcheesi set. Eventually, traffic slows, and other neighbors venture into the street for gingersnaps and a turn at the Parcheesi set. Flowers get planted along the street, and children play hopscotch. Traffic was slower, but “no one minded,” Rockliff writes. “If you drove too fast, you couldn’t smell the honeysuckle. You wouldn’t hear the music of the mariachi band. Worst of all, you’d miss the chance to sample one of Agatha May Walker’s sweet and spicy gingersnaps.”

Sarah McMenemy’s mixed-media illustrations are beautiful and evoke midcentury modern: men and women wear hats and long coats; children are dressed in pinafores. Though they’re completely charming, in some ways this choice makes the message of The Busiest Street in Town seem less directed to our contemporary lifestyles—when in truth we could all use encouragement to slow down. Still, this detail is not likely to register with young readers, who will be drawn into a fun, absorbing story that proves faster isn’t always better.

Sweet and spicy gingersnaps make the world a better place. Or at least, they’re a starting point in Mara Rockliff’s second picture book, The Busiest Street in Town. Agatha May Walker wants to bring some cookies to her neighbor Eulalie, but when she starts to cross the street, the speeding traffic on Rushmore Boulevard won’t […]
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Black Tower

Review by Trisha Ping

After writing two witty novels about gay life in Washington, D.C., Louis Bayard hit on a winning formula with his 2003 novel, Mr. Timothy, which starred Dickens’ Tiny Tim and gave the character a complexity that was sorely lacking in the original. He followed that up with The Pale Blue Eye, a story of Edgar Allen Poe’s time as a cadet at West Point that earned an Edgar Award nomination. Now, Bayard turns his attention to the turbulent French Restoration. The Black Tower puts legendary French policeman and ex-con Vidocq (the inspiration for Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean) together with medical student Hector Carpentier to find out what really happened to the son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.

A clue in a dead man’s pocket leads Vidocq to Hector, whose late father, a doctor, treated the Dauphin during his imprisonment. Though records show the boy died in the tower, a long-lost diary and a murderer who seems to be stalking Hector and anyone else with a connection to the boy-who-should-be-king indicate otherwise. Could Charles Rapskeller, a young man with an affinity for gardening, really be Prince Louis-Charles?

Bayard has a particular talent, also displayed in Mr. Timothy, for evoking the poignancy of the longing for a lost father without being overly sentimental. In the years following the Dauphin’s “death,” the senior Carpentier became closed off from his family and friends, and it is only by reading his journals that Hector discovers how much he was loved by his father. Though he and Charles are close in age, Hector finds himself taking over his father’s role as Charles’ protector, while Vidocq goads him on in pursuit of definitive evidence of Charles’ royal lineage.

In his previous novels, Bayard has had the courage to keep the ending honest—as in life, not every loose end is left neatly tied. The Black Tower is no exception, and it includes a final twist that will leave even the closest of readers flipping back through the pages to find clues they’ve overlooked. A perfectly balanced blend of compelling characters, elegant writing and spellbinding plot, The Black Tower will keep fans of historical fiction riveted.

 

Did you love The Pale Blue Eye on Netflix? Check out Louis Bayard's earlier novel about a real-life mystery involving the disappearance of Marie Antoinette's son.
FictionThriller

Billy Summers

Review by Trisha Ping

Five decades into an almost singularly successful career, Stephen King goes in an intriguing new direction with Billy Summers. Though this novel includes many classic King touchstones—revenge, a writer hero, unlikely friendships, trauma, justice—its dedication to realism and intense, almost meditative focus on the titular main character make it a standout among his works.

As the novel opens, 44-year-old military sniper-turned-assassin Billy Summers is reluctantly agreeing to take on one last job. Though he only kills bad people (he considers himself “a garbageman with a gun”), Billy is tired of the isolation and violence his chosen career entails, as well as of the dull, incurious persona he puts on to deflect the attention of the dangerous people who hire him. The payday for this final assignment is astronomical, and the target undeniably deserves his fate, but what really convinces Billy to take on the job is the cover: He’ll have to pose as a writer who’s renting space in an office building to complete his first novel.

The criminals who hired Billy find this cover story to be ironic due to Billy’s “dumb self” mask, but Billy, who secretly reveres Émile Zola and Tim O’Brien, is attracted to the idea of putting his own story on paper. As Billy begins to write about his traumatic childhood, his cover becomes increasingly real to him. But even as he sinks into his identity as “Dave,” the guileless would-be great American novelist who beats the pants off his neighbors at Monopoly and grabs drinks with a woman who works in his office building, he begins to sense that there’s more to this job than he’s being told. And of course, the hit is only the beginning of the action.

The poignant beats in this early portion of Billy Summers will be familiar to readers of 11/23/63, which also features a main character with a hidden mission who becomes a part of a community even as he deceives the people around him. But given that this novel is about a hit man, the violence kicks in quickly and continues through most of the book. King’s trademark skill with suspense and action is on display in several thrilling set pieces, including the breathlessly paced original hit, but this novel also stretches his literary ambitions. Much of Billy’s autofiction appears on the page in a book within a book that gives readers a deeper understanding of its main character. And while Billy shifts between personas and dons physical disguises with aplomb, his internal self comes more clearly into focus as he writes about his experiences and interrogates the stories he’s been telling himself about his past—and about himself. Billy might kill only bad people, but he’s still a killer. Can a person who ends the lives of others ever be considered good? 

Misery, The Dark Half, Lisey’s Story and The Shining all feature writers as characters, but their craft was either incidental or corrosive. In Billy Summers, the art of creating fiction is portrayed as an empowering force. By taking control of our stories, King suggests, we can begin to heal, find hope and even discover a truth that is more profound than reality. These resonant ideas provide a somber counterpoint to the action in this contemplative thriller.

 

In Stephen King's contemplative thriller, Billy Summers, the art of creating fiction is portrayed as an empowering force.
FictionDystopian Fiction

The Testaments

Review by Trisha Ping

Is it possible to compose a satisfying sequel to a novel that’s become a modern classic? That’s a challenge in itself, but the difficulty goes up exponentially if said novel has also been turned into a blockbuster TV series. 

In her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), which outlined a near future in which women’s freedom had been completely curtailed, celebrated Canadian writer Margaret Atwood leaps these hurdles with Olympian ease. The Testaments is a crowd-pleasing page turner. Atwood leans in to the attractions of both her original novel, with its Scheherazade-style narration, and the TV series, with its resistance-minded heroine. 

The Testaments is told in the first person by three narrators, allowing for a more panoramic view of Gilead than the cloistered Handmaid Offred could provide. The voice that flows with the most relish from Atwood’s pen, and that will be the most familiar to readers, is the Machiavellian Aunt Lydia. In Gilead’s patriarchal society, which categorizes women according to their function (Handmaids, for example, exist solely to bear children), Aunts are responsible for enforcing these roles. As a privileged member of an oppressed class, Aunt Lydia makes every decision with maintaining her status in mind. 

The other two narrators are young girls: one raised within Gilead’s walls by a powerful Commander and his wife, and the other raised in Canada as the child of Mayday resistance operatives. As their stories unfold, it becomes clear that the power to bring Gilead down may be in their hands. 

If a book must be groundbreaking to be a true classic, The Testaments can’t be ranked alongside its predecessor. Today, the divide between genre and literary fiction is more porous, and dystopian fiction is an established genre—in large part thanks to novels like The Handmaid’s Tale. But just as The Handmaid’s Tale was a response to the backlash against the women’s movements of the 1970s, The Testaments is equally of its time, drawing from contemporary politics in ways that resonate. Atwood remains a keen chronicler of power and the way status (or lack thereof) affects how it is leveraged, and seeing her explore that issue in Gilead once again is a pleasure.

Is it possible to compose a satisfying sequel to a novel that’s become a modern classic? That’s a challenge in itself, but the difficulty goes up exponentially if said novel has also been turned into a blockbuster TV series.  In her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), which outlined a near future in which women’s […]
FictionLiterary Fiction

Lost Children Archive

Review by Trisha Ping

BookPage starred review, February 2019

Valeria Luiselli’s fourth novel takes readers on a contemplative road trip from New York City to the American Southwest. A blended family of four—parents and their two children, a boy, 10, and a girl, 5—is relocating so the father can research Apache history for a new project. The mother is going on the thin hope of locating the daughters of a friend, two young girls who attempted to cross the border from Mexico in search of asylum. But both parents know the marriage is winding down, and the mother and her daughter will return to the city after the summer is over.

As they wend their way through the Appalachians, across Oklahoma and into the desert, the father tells stories of the Apaches’ civilization and its eventual exile and defeat, while the mother frets over the fates of migrant children and dreads her separation from the boy in the back seat. During the drive, the children read books and learn all the words to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” seemingly ignorant of their parents’ burdens.

Lost Children Archive isn’t a stream-of-consciousness story, but it reads almost like a memory. It unfolds in short, vignettelike scenes and takes you deep into the head space of its narrators. The first half, told by the mother, is meandering, the current-day journey interspersed with sketches from her earlier life and scenes from a book called Elegies, which tells the stories of migrant children. In the second half, told through the boy’s eyes, the stakes become higher and the action ramps up. Luiselli is a deliberate yet imaginative writer, and her work as an advocate for asylum-seekers informs the novel’s skillful blend of family story and issue-driven themes.

The characters join a long line of people forced to face separation and relocation to unfamiliar territory, their current situation an echo of so many others, from enslaved Africans to Apaches and today’s child refugees. These echoes will remain in the mind of the reader as well.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Valeria Luiselli for Lost Children Archive.

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Valeria Luiselli’s fourth novel takes readers on a contemplative road trip from New York City to the American Southwest.
FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

Ways to Hide in Winter

Review by Trisha Ping

It’s often said that there are two types of stories: A person goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. In her debut novel, Sarah St. Vincent goes with option two: Ways to Hide in Winter opens with the arrival of a mysterious man in the Pennsylvania wilderness.

Both hunting season and tourism season are well over when the man, Daniil, stumbles over the snowy threshold of the hostel where Kathleen works. It’s obvious he’s not from the region, but Kathleen, who has chosen her job partly for its isolation, isn’t interested in prying into someone’s past. At 26, she’s been a widow for more than four years and is still recovering from the car accident that killed her husband. She also holds secrets about their marriage that she’s unwilling to reveal.

As she gets to know Daniil, Kathleen grows curious about what caused him to leave Uzbekistan. As she learns about the country’s troubled history, she finds herself unable to continue to compartmentalize her own past. Both Daniil and Kathleen carry the guilt of secrets and betrayal—but do they deserve to? Can you move on from your past after causing or enduring suffering?

St. Vincent, a lawyer who has worked with the Human Rights Watch, has vast experience with these questions, and readers unfamiliar with Uzbekistan’s human rights history (likely most of them) will find this novel especially eye-opening. Ways to Hide in Winter makes it clear that you can hide for a season, but spring thaw will catch up to you eventually.

 

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

It’s often said that there are two types of stories: A person goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. In her debut novel, Sarah St. Vincent goes with option two: Ways to Hide in Winter opens with the arrival of a mysterious man in the Pennsylvania wilderness.

FictionLiterary FictionFamily Saga

The Caregiver

Review by Trisha Ping

It’s bittersweet to crack open The Caregiver, Samuel Park’s long-awaited follow-up to his luminous, romantic epic set in Korea, This Burns My Heart (2011). Park died of stomach cancer in 2017, so his second full-length novel is also his last. It’s a tender mother-daughter story that alternates between 1980s Brazil and present-day Los Angeles, two places that Park—who was born in Brazil and lived in Los Angeles for years—knew well.

Mara Alencar left her native Brazil in the 1980s at age 16, fleeing that country’s turmoil. Ten years later, she’s living in Los Angeles in a tiny apartment with two other Brazilian expats and drifting through her days as a caregiver to a cancer-stricken woman in Bel Air. A wealthy 40-something, the divorced and childless Kathryn calls Mara her adopted daughter and jokes about leaving her house to Mara when she dies. Despite this professed affection, Kathryn knows little about the woman who sees to her comfort on a daily basis.

Mara likes it that way. She’s trying to forget her past—and her brave and impetuous mother, Ana, who spurred Mara’s escape to the U.S. thanks to her connections with revolutionaries. Although Mara hasn’t seen or spoken to her mother since leaving Brazil, Ana haunts everything Mara does and every choice she makes.

As chapters alternate between Mara’s past in Brazil and her present-day life in California, Park explores what it means to care for someone and the beauty of human resilience and survival. Though the title most obviously refers to Mara, it’s also a callback to Ana, a flawed woman full of fierce affection for her daughter. “I would be loved again and again,” thinks Mara, “and it was because she taught me how.”

 

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

It’s bittersweet to crack open The Caregiver, Samuel Park’s long-awaited follow-up to his luminous, romantic epic set in Korea, This Burns My Heart (2011). Park died of stomach cancer in 2017, so his second full-length novel is also his last. It’s a tender mother-daughter story that alternates between 1980s Brazil and present- day Los Angeles, two places that Park—who was born in Brazil and lived in Los Angeles for years—knew well.

FictionSatireLiterary Fiction

Flight of the hedge fund manager

Review by Trisha Ping

Uneven and slightly indulgent, Gary Shteyngart’s fourth novel, Lake Success, nevertheless charms thanks to the author’s trademark warm-hearted humor and practiced satirical eye. Hedge fund manager Barry Cohen hasn’t been a success in work or family life. Though the fund he manages has hit the $2 billion mark, he’s being questioned about insider trading; his younger wife, Seema, is growing less interested in him by the day; and his 3-year-old son, Shiva, is autistic. There’s only one thing for Barry to do: run away.

So he does, tossing his smartphone and black AmEx to the wayside and boarding a Greyhound in his Citibank vest. Maybe, Barry thinks, reuniting with his college girlfriend is the answer to his problems. Juxtaposed with Barry’s picaresque journey is Seema’s more mundane—if life in a luxurious Manhattan apartment can be said to be mundane—set of challenges as she tries to accept Shiva’s limitations and embarks on an affair with a neighbor.

Caught up in the chaos of the 2016 presidential campaign, the fractured country reflects the fractures in Barry’s soul, and as ever, Shteyngart reveals America’s frailties with darkly mocking humor that never swerves into nihilism. He is likewise forgiving of his characters’ many failings. In the case of Barry, that indulgence is occasionally frustrating: Given his many privileges and avoidance of responsibility, the self-pity and lack of self-awareness Barry demonstrates for nearly the entire novel becomes tiresome. Nevertheless, the verve of Shteyngart’s writing keeps the pages turning and makes Lake Success an overall winner for readers.

 

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

Uneven and slightly indulgent, Gary Shteyngart’s fourth novel, Lake Success, nevertheless charms thanks to the author’s trademark warm-hearted humor and practiced satirical eye. Hedge fund manager Barry Cohen hasn’t been a success in work or family life. Though the fund he manages has hit the $2 billion mark, he’s being questioned about insider trading; his younger wife, Seema, is growing less interested in him by the day; and his 3-year-old son, Shiva, is autistic. There’s only one thing for Barry to do: run away.

FictionDebut Fiction

Changing the narrative

Review by Trisha Ping

A resourceful, resilient teen heroine is at the heart of Meghan MacLean Weir’s propulsive debut novel. Demure and obedient, 17-year-old Essie has played the perfect preacher’s daughter for years—she’s the youngest of the brood that makes up “Six for Hicks,” a hit reality TV show starring her family. But now Essie is pregnant, and she won’t name the father. As the novel opens, Essie’s image-first mother is debating whether to arrange an abortion or secret adoption, or somehow try to pass off her grandchild as her own.

Essie, however, has other plans: After all, what gets better ratings than a wedding? Essie already has her eye on a groom: Roarke Richards, an athletic high school senior. The two barely know each other, and Roarke is skeptical—but once he realizes the deal includes enough money to save his parents’ business and pay for his dream college, he’s in. As Roarke and Essie try to sell their sudden wedding as a fairy tale and not a shotgun, the reader (and Roarke) gradually realizes that there’s more to Essie’s story (and her plan) than it first appears.

Weir, a doctor whose first book was a memoir about her pediatric residency, doles out the details of Essie’s past slowly but steadily, gaining a momentum that keeps the pages turning. As a pastor’s daughter, Weir is also adept at using the language of evangelical life, lending an authenticity that takes the book beyond a Duggar-family pastiche. The tentative trust that grows between Essie and Roarke gives The Book of Essie emotional depth, and the questions at its center have a surprising moral weight. Readers will root for Essie through every twist and turn of her story.

 

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

A resourceful, resilient teen heroine is at the heart of Meghan MacLean Weir’s propulsive debut novel. Demure and obedient, 17-year-old Essie has played the perfect preacher’s daughter for years—she’s the youngest of the brood that makes up “Six for Hicks,” a hit reality TV show starring her family. But now Essie is pregnant, and she won’t name the father. As the novel opens, Essie’s image-first mother is debating whether to arrange an abortion or secret adoption, or somehow try to pass off her grandchild as her own.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

The center will not hold

Review by Trisha Ping

Fractured family dynamics and the search for a missing fortune are the main threads of this textured debut, set mostly in Cleveland, Ohio, over the course of three decades.

The Comedown centers on the families of two men: Leland Bloom-Mittwoch and his drug dealer, Reggie Marshall. Reggie sees Leland as an unstable client; Leland, however, considers Reggie his best friend. Leland is present the day Reggie is shot, and he flees the scene, distraught, with a briefcase full of money. Over the ensuing years, Leland struggles with addiction and mental illness, wrecks his first marriage, enters into a second and has a damaging affair, while Reggie’s wife, who was once a promising student, is left to raise their two boys in poverty, alone. Through several tantalizing plot twists, the lives of the Bloom-Mittwoch and Marshall clans remain intertwined in a network of simmering tension, blame and guilt.

First-time author Rebekah Frumkin, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is generous with her characters and their frailties. Each point of view (and there are many) feels distinct; often, the same events are shown through the eyes of different characters, adding dimension. Although some readers might find it disorienting to be launched into another point of view just when they’ve settled into the current one, the novel’s nonlinear, fragmented structure reflects its themes of disconnection and the uneasy mental states of most of the characters.

Messy, meandering and occasionally illuminating, The Comedown is a family saga that recalls real life.

 

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

Fractured family dynamics and the search for a missing fortune are the main threads of this textured debut, set mostly in Cleveland, Ohio, over the course of three decades.

FictionLiterary FictionFantasy

Circe

Review by Trisha Ping

Madeline Miller’s enthralling second novel may be about a goddess, but it has a lot to say about what it means to be a woman. In Circe, the acclaimed author of The Song of Achilles (which won the Orange Prize in 2012) unfurls the story of the legendary witch from Homer’s Odyssey with lyric intensity.

Circe grows up in the palace of her father, the sun god Helios, listening to stories of the legendary fall of the Titans and conflicts among the gods. Like all immortals, Helios is ruthless, capricious and obsessed with maintaining his status. Circe, a goddess without exceptional beauty or discernible power, is sidelined in his court, unworthy of even being married off. It isn’t until Circe falls in love with a mortal that she realizes she has the ability to bless or harm others through transfiguration—a discovery that causes her to be labeled a threat. Helios exiles her to a remote island; there, she is able to further develop her skills with pharmakeia, the art of using plants and herbs to perform magic.

Though sailors occasionally attempt to seek shelter on her island’s shores, Circe protects herself by transforming any men with bad intentions into pigs. As centuries roll by, key encounters with gods and humans alike punctuate her isolated existence—a meeting with Medea and a shocking midwifery scene are particularly mesmerizing. Eventually, Circe’s connections with others force her to embrace her powers, breach her exile and choose her destiny.

Miller, who studied classics at Brown University and teaches high school Greek and Latin, paints a vivid picture of classical Greece: the mindset of its people, the beauty of its landscapes, the details of daily tasks. The elemental allure of mythology, with its magic and mystery and questions of fate and free will, is presented here with added freshness that comes from seeing this world from a female perspective. Like its heroine, this is a novel to underestimate at your peril.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Madeline Miller for Circe.

The acclaimed author of The Song of Achilles unfurls the story of the legendary witch from Homer’s Odyssey with lyric intensity.
FictionHistorical FictionGothic Fiction

Dolls and dark corners

Review by Trisha Ping

The chill of The Silent Companions sneaks up on you and then settles in like a gray mist on a British moor. Which is no doubt intentional, since Laura Purcell’s third novel follows solidly in the Gothic literary tradition. It’s an unnerving read of a woman’s unraveling.

It’s 1865, and Elsie Bainbridge is en route to her new husband’s estate, The Bridge, in rural England. But it’s not a happy journey: Rupert Bainbridge has suddenly died there, and she’s traveling as a widow, not a bride, with only his cousin Sarah at her side. She’s also pregnant.

When Elsie arrives at The Bridge, things go from bad to worse. The housekeeper is borderline hostile, the servants are frightened of strange things that happen in the nursery, and mysterious 17th-century wooden figures are found in a locked room. These “silent companions” are a link to a Bainbridge ancestor, and Elsie starts to suspect they have a sinister purpose. She begins to believe that Rupert’s death was no accident—are she and her baby the next target?

Readers know more than Elsie does: From page one, her more modern story is intercut with both scenes from the 1630s, when the silent companions joined the household, and chapters from the near future, where a now-mute Elsie is confined to a sanatorium. But plenty of suspense comes from waiting to discover when and how the boom will fall.

Purcell ably summons a pervasive sense of doom and dread, and though few of the story beats will truly surprise genre fans, she conjures some genuinely creative horror elements. The Silent Companions is a shivery treat.

 

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

The chill of The Silent Companions sneaks up on you and then settles in like a gray mist on a British moor. Which is no doubt intentional, since Laura Purcell’s third novel follows solidly in the Gothic literary tradition. It’s an unnerving read of a woman’s unraveling.

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