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Trisha Ping

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

A funny, morbid quest for answers

Review by Trisha Ping

Tackling life’s biggest question is an ambitious goal for a first novel—but Thomas Pierce, one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 recipients, does it with aplomb. Set in the near future, The Afterlives is a mordantly funny and deeply human look at one man’s quest to find out what happens after we die.

Jim Byrd has firsthand experience with death. His heart stops momentarily when he is only 33, but all he remembers is darkness. Ever since, Jim has wondered what that meant. Soon after, at a local restaurant, two more life-changing events happen: Jim reconnects with a high school girlfriend, Annie, and hears a disembodied voice that might be a ghost. As he and Annie fall in love, Jim draws her into his investigation of the voice, a search that uncovers a century-old love triangle and leads to a mysterious scientist in Little Rock, Arkansas, who might have some answers.

Pierce, a graduate of the University of Virginia creative writing program whose short story collection, Hall of Small Mammals, was a literary favorite in 2015, displays a nimble sense of humor and wild creativity in The Afterlives. The near future he conjures here is one believable step from our own, with holograms, called “Grammers,” taking over service jobs and medical devices that can be monitored from your smartphone. The fantastical afterlife elements are grounded in Pierce’s realistic depiction of relationships, from romantic to parental.

“Do you think we’re not supposed to have it? That, to a certain extent, we’re supposed to live in the dark?” Jim asks. Maybe knowledge of life after death is a futile quest, but Pierce’s intelligent debut proves there’s still something to gain from pursuing it.

 

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

Tackling life’s biggest question is an ambitious goal for a first novel—but Thomas Pierce, one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 recipients, does it with aplomb. Set in the near future, The Afterlives is a mordantly funny and deeply human look at one man’s quest to find out what happens after we die.

FictionHistorical Fiction

The lady of Little House

Review by Trisha Ping

Readers who grew up cherishing the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder will find much to savor in Caroline: Little House, Revisited, the third novel from Sarah Miller. Authorized by the Little House Heritage Trust and researched with letters, memoirs and other family records, Caroline recounts the events of the Little House on the Prairie series through the eyes of Caroline Ingalls, better known as “Ma.”

The story begins as the Ingalls family prepares to depart the “little house in the big woods” in Pepin, Wisconsin, to stake a claim in Kansas. Caroline, who has just discovered she is pregnant with a third child, is less enthusiastic than her husband, Charles, about leaving their extended family and taking their two small daughters—Mary, 5, and Laura, 3—into the region popularly known as “Indian Territory.” But she dutifully stitches and waxes the canvas wagon cover, packs her beloved china shepherdess into her trunk and completes the other myriad practical preparations for the long and difficult journey. When the family reaches their new home, more trials await that will test their bravery and skills.

One of the greatest charms of the Little House series—at least, for this reader—was the meticulous depiction of the chores, pleasures and challenges of everyday pioneer life (pig-bladder balloons!). Caroline follows in this tradition, as Miller explains everything from the intricacies of building a log house to the preparations for a new baby (Caroline carefully stitches a layer of waxed fabric to the inside of her bodice as a type of early brassiere). Life on the frontier had many dangers, and through Caroline’s eyes, the stakes of the story feel higher. In the original series, Laura’s fears could always be calmed by the right word from Ma or Pa. By contrast, Caroline knows that a lapse in judgment can have fatal consequences, and the reader feels this weight. Miller also introduces an adult element through the relationship between Caroline and Charles, which she depicts as a passionate and supportive partnership.

Full of lyrical descriptions of the wild beauty of the Kansas countryside, Caroline is a well-researched and thoughtful look at the inner life of one of America’s most famous frontier women.

 

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

Readers who grew up cherishing the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder will find much to savor in Caroline: Little House, Revisited, the third novel from Sarah Miller. Authorized by the Little House Heritage Trust and researched with letters, memoirs and other family records, Caroline recounts the events of the Little House on the Prairie series through the eyes of Caroline Ingalls, better known as “Ma.”

FictionLiterary Fiction

Watch me disappear

Review by Trisha Ping

Nicole Krauss opens her challenging and illuminating fourth novel, Forest Dark, with a disappearance. Jules Epstein, a wealthy, elderly Manhattanite, returns to his birth city of Tel Aviv on a mysterious mission—and vanishes without a trace. In a parallel storyline, a novelist and mother of two named Nicole travels to Tel Aviv, hoping to disappear into fiction. At home in Brooklyn, she’s in a creative slump and a foundering marriage, and thinks a change of scene might turn things around.

Readers can be forgiven for wondering how much of the fictional Nicole’s storyline is based on Krauss’ own relationship with former husband (and fellow writer) Jonathan Safran Foer, with whom she has two children. But it isn’t long before the absorbing fictional world Krauss has created drowns out any literary gossip. Both Epstein and Nicole encounter enigmatic strangers who seduce them with stories: Epstein discovers he might have ties to the biblical King David, while Nicole is given a suitcase that is said to contain lost manuscripts of Franz Kafka. These revelations place both characters on surprising trajectories.

Though the story at times might feel meandering, Krauss is always in control. The myriad literary allusions and her ruminations on the nature of story and on boundaries of all sorts—including those of reality—deepen the journeys of her two main characters. Like Krauss’ previous books Great House and The History of Love, Forest Dark slowly builds to a powerful emotional crescendo and an ending that feels revelatory.

Haunting and reflective, poetic and wise, this is another masterful work from one of America’s best writers.

 

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

Nicole Krauss opens her challenging and illuminating fourth novel, Forest Dark, with a disappearance. Jules Epstein, a wealthy, elderly Manhattanite, returns to his birth city of Tel Aviv on a mysterious mission—and vanishes without a trace. In a parallel storyline, a novelist and mother of two named Nicole travels to Tel Aviv, hoping to disappear into fiction. At home in Brooklyn, she’s in a creative slump and a foundering marriage, and thinks a change of scene might turn things around.

FictionSuspenseDebut Fiction

Heart of darkness

Review by Trisha Ping

Australian author Sarah Schmidt plunges readers into one of America’s most notorious true crime stories with her fiction debut, See What I Have Done. In August 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were found bludgeoned to death by axe in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Who killed the Bordens, and why? Evidence pointed to Andrew’s adult daughter, Lizzie, but she was acquitted. Popular myth never let her quite off the hook (you’ve heard that eerie nursery rhyme). But was she really guilty?

See What I Have Done is interested in this question, but perhaps not as much as some readers might be. Schmidt eschews the “whodunit” format to focus on the warped relationships and deep resentments that hover over the house in Fall River. Told in the voices of Lizzie; her older sister, Emma; the family maid, Bridget; and a mysterious stranger named Benjamin, who comes to town with LIzzie’s sinister Uncle John, the novel turns that August afternoon around and around, examining it in microscopic detail from these four separate angles like a jeweler making an appraisal of a singularly dark gem. Lizzie and Emma have a codependent yet contentious relationship, and neither can stand their stepmother. Bridget can’t get over Mrs. Borden’s refusal to let her go home to Ireland. And Uncle John is holding a grudge against his brother, Andrew.

Schmidt sketches the motivations of her characters with subtle strokes, allowing readers to fill in some notable blanks—what is Uncle John’s deal, anyway?—but she leaves little to the imagination when it comes to their physical bodies. The damage done to the Borden parents is described with visceral relish; the scents of vomit, sweat and blood are almost palpable. Like her fellow Australian Hannah Kent, whose debut novel, Burial Rites, also centered on a real-life 19th-century crime, Schmidt conjures the explosive mix of claustrophobia and frustration that life in a small community with a rigid social structure can engender. See What I Have Done is a chilling summer read.

Australian author Sarah Schmidt plunges readers into one of America’s most notorious true crime stories with her fiction debut, See What I Have Done.

FictionFamily SagaDebut Fiction

The women behind a white-collar criminal

Review by Trisha Ping

Everyone loves the schadenfreude of a riches-to-rags story—except, that is, the people living it. In Brooklyn-based writer Angelica Baker’s ambitious debut, Our Little Racket, three women whose fates are tied to the fortunes of Wall Street legend Bob D’Amico find their lives turned upside down by the financial crash of September 15, 2008.

What Bob—who’s been nicknamed “Silverback” in the press due to his alpha-male dominance—did to cause the downfall of his investment firm, Weiss & Partners, isn’t immediately clear to anyone. Not his 15-year-old daughter, Madison; his beautiful, patrician wife, Isabel; or their longtime nanny, Lily. But whether he is guilty, innocent or somewhere in between, these women know that his disgrace is theirs, and their stratified community in Greenwich, Connecticut, isn’t going to let them forget it. All three are forced to think about their place in that community now: how they got there, what it means to them and what they might give up or whom they might be willing to betray to keep it.

The story is narrated in turns by Lily, Isabel and Madison, as well as Madison’s former best friend, Amanda, and Isabel’s wannabe best friend, Mina. Each sees the community from a unique point of view, which rounds out the portrayal of the place and society in interesting ways, but much of the novel is spent describing their emotions as they wait for Bob to declare his innocence or guilt, for the world to drop its verdict on him, or both. The almost complete interiority of the action and conflict makes for frustrated characters as well as occasionally claustrophobic readers, who are likely to long for a glimpse of the action outside the gilded cage of Greenwich. Still, Baker’s deft hand with metaphor and smooth writing style, along with a strong conclusion that cracks open one of the book’s most mysterious characters, makes Our Little Racket a journey worth taking.

Everyone loves the schadenfreude of a riches-to-rags story—except, that is, the people living it. In Brooklyn-based writer Angelica Baker’s ambitious debut, Our Little Racket, three women whose fates are tied to the fortunes of Wall Street legend Bob D’Amico find their lives turned upside down by the financial crash of September 15, 2008.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A village and a family under occupation

Review by Trisha Ping

Newbery Honor winner Patricia Reilly Giff explores a lesser-known side of World War II in her latest novel for middle grade readers. Set in the French border region of Alsace, which was passed between Germany and France during the 19th and 20th centuries, Genevieve’s War opens in the summer of 1939. Thirteen-year-old Genevieve has lived with various relatives since her parents’ deaths, and is about to return to the United States after a summer spent on her grandmother’s farm. Though she’s made a close friend in her chatty neighbor and has a crush on the pharmacist’s son, Genevieve hasn’t connected with the taciturn, hardworking Mémé. Nevertheless, when Mémé twists an ankle just before Genevieve’s departure, the teenager impulsively decides to stay to help her grandmother survive the occupation everyone knows is coming.

As the war drags on, Genevieve has plenty of reasons to regret her choice. The German army arrives, commandeering sleeping space in the farm and the family’s horse and cart. She fears for the lives of friends who join the resistance movement, and must question the loyalty of others. Yet over the years, Genevieve and Mémé build a grudging, mutual respect, and Genevieve gains a greater understanding of her father, who lived through a similar occupation and devastating war as a teenager.

Though the novel’s narrow focus doesn’t allow for a full view of the complex history of Alsace in WWII, it does capture small details of the way life changed for the Alsatian people under German occupation: wedding rings worn for a lifetime moved to the right hand, per German custom; children forced to speak German instead of French in school; the sudden mistrust of lifelong neighbors who might be spying for the occupiers. Genevieve’s mistakes, as well as her acts of bravery, will encourage children to imagine what they might do in a similar situation. Genevieve’s War provides an intriguing glimpse into a region’s turbulent past through the eyes of one American girl.

Newbery Honor winner Patricia Reilly Giff explores a lesser-known side of World War II in her latest novel for middle grade readers. Set in the French border region of Alsace, which was passed between Germany and France during the 19th and 20th centuries, Genevieve’s War opens in the summer of 1939.

NonfictionMemoir

Remembering a Russian childhood

Review by Trisha Ping

Anyone who reads the startling fiction of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya has to wonder what sort of forces shaped her unusually vivid voice. The titles of her works alone—which include There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In and the bestselling There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby—are tip-offs that the pages within contain something out of the ordinary.


With the U.S. release of her memoir, The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia, Petrushevskaya explores the eventful, turbulent childhood that shaped her worldview in spare, often darkly humorous vignettes, gracefully translated by Anna Summers. Born in 1938 into a family of Bolsheviks who were among those declared enemies of the state by Stalin, the author grew up in the shadow of exiled or murdered family members and endured a lengthy separation from her own mother, who left Petrushevskaya with relatives in the countryside in order to pursue an education in Moscow. But this was no idyll; Petrushevskaya “sported matchstick limbs and a swollen belly” due to malnourishment, and would go through their neighbors’ trash after dark, hoping to find scraps of food. She begged for money on the streets, had no toys and only one crayon (it was purple). These hardships are recounted without sentiment, but with feeling.

Yet there was joy in her childhood, too—her brilliant, educated grandmother knew the Russian classics by heart and would spend hours recounting them to the young Petrushevskaya, spurring her interest in storytelling. Many memories have a touch of the magic Petrushevskaya includes in her fiction, like a strange encounter with a beautiful lady she finds smoking alone in an isolated cabin. “How did a beauty like her end up in the middle of the woods? . . . She would have adopted me, I am sure, had I stayed in the woods.” 


Though Petrushevskaya’s hardscrabble childhood was hardly unique among Russians of her generation, her perspective on it is decidedly original. The Girl from the Metropol Hotel is a well-crafted glimpse into the past of one of Russia’s most intriguing writers.

Anyone who reads the startling fiction of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya has to wonder what sort of forces shaped her unusually vivid voice. The titles of her works alone—which include There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In and the bestselling There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her […]
NonfictionMemoir

The language of love

Review by Trisha Ping

When New Yorker staff writer Lauren Collins moved to London, she thought that would be the farthest she’d ever be, both physically and culturally, from her native Wilmington, North Carolina. Then she met Olivier. “Soon I was living with a man who used Chanel deodorant and believed it was a consensus view that Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo was on account of the rain,” she writes in her wry memoir, When in French. 

Collins and Olivier established their relationship in England, a somewhat neutral zone: his continent, her language. But when his job took the couple to Geneva, Collins began to realize that she could no longer put off learning French. It wasn’t just because she was shut out of everyday life in Geneva or because she had mistakenly implied in a note to her mother-in-law that she had given birth to a coffeemaker—without knowing French, she was unable to truly understand her husband. “Talking to you in English is like touching you with gloves,” says Olivier.

So Collins embarks on a quest to learn French, starting with a language class and working her way up to newscasts and episodes of “The Voice: La Plus Belle Voix” on TF1. 

In between unsparing recitals of her pratfalls and triumphs on the road to conquering her husband’s langue maternelle, Collins flashes back through their relationship, exploring its cultural divide. She also investigates the questions that her pursuit raises. Does speaking a different language change who you are as a person? How does language shape a culture? She visits the Académie française, researches an Amazonian tribe that requires its members to marry into a different language group and unearths other tidbits of trivia and history that will fascinate lovers of words and language. 

Still, the heart of the book lies in Collins’ personal story, which she tells with humor, humility and a deep affection for the people and cultures involved. Whether she’s describing the grinding exhaustion of learning a foreign language or the euphoria of a breakthrough, her determination makes the reader root for her. When in French is both an entertaining fish-out-of-water story and a wise and insightful look at the way two very different people and families manage to find common ground.

 

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

When New Yorker staff writer Lauren Collins moved to London, she thought that would be the farthest she’d ever be, both physically and culturally, from her native Wilmington, North Carolina. Then she met Olivier. “Soon I was living with a man who used Chanel deodorant and believed it was a consensus view that Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo was on account of the rain,” she writes in her wry memoir, When in French.
FictionDebut Fiction

An uneasy family reunion

Review by Trisha Ping

Readers who devour quirky family dramas like Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Be Frank With Me won’t want to miss this anticipated debut about a dysfunctional New York City family. In The Nest, the four adult Plumb children have been counting on their inheritance: Melody has two daughters to send to college, Jack needs some cash to keep his struggling business afloat, and Beatrice is years overdue with her second novel. But when their fresh-out-of-rehab oldest brother, Leo, loses it all, the siblings must reshape their futures. 

Author Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney worked as a marketing copywriter before turning to fiction. She’s at her best when describing the fluctuating sibling bonds within a large family—the uneasy alliances, the simmering resentments, the unspoken secrets and the fierce love. She also nails the ways the money can affect relationships, in ways large and small. Smart, moving and warm-hearted, The Nest is a debut to savor.

 

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

Readers who devour quirky family dramas like Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Be Frank With Me won’t want to miss this anticipated debut about a dysfunctional New York City family.
FictionLiterary Fiction

The Mark and the Void

Review by Trisha Ping

Paul Murray’s hilarious and surreal third novel is once again set in his home country of Ireland. In the wake of the financial crisis, Dublin is full of half-completed construction projects and Occupy-style protest camps, but the financial sector of the city is set apart, mirroring the separation between the people whose lives financial policy affects and those who set it.

Claude Martingale is one of the latter. A French expat who chose investment banking as a career after majoring in philosophy, Claude doesn’t have much of a life outside work. But when he realizes the mysterious man following him around is a writer purportedly interested in turning Claude’s life into the great Irish novel, Claude suddenly starts to take an interest in the direction of his hitherto aimless narrative. 

And that’s only the beginning of the action in The Mark and the Void, which is part office comedy, part manifesto and part satire—a tricky combination for any writer. At times the book feels the weight, and none of the characters are quite as lovable as those of Murray’s 2010 breakout hit, the transcendent Skippy Dies. Still, they are vivid and surprising. And Murray’s rare talent for combining humor with big ideas is on full display. He draws parallels between financial capitalism and social media: Just as capital is only important for what can be derived from it, your life is only as valuable as the story you can use it to tell; in both cases, what is real is ignored. Yet nearly every page contains at least one laugh-out-loud line. When a coworker says that she and Claude “get on like a house on fire,” he thinks, “I picture the flames, the screaming. ‘Yes,’ I say.” 

The Mark and the Void is the welcome return of one of literature’s most intelligent voices.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Paul Murray’s hilarious and surreal third novel is once again set in his home country of Ireland. In the wake of the financial crisis, Dublin is full of half-completed construction projects and Occupy-style protest camps, but the financial sector of the city is set apart, mirroring the separation between the people whose lives financial policy […]
FictionHorror

A chilling mystery in the Tower Motel

Review by Trisha Ping

The creepy motel is a staple of the horror genre—think the Overlook or the Bates. In her chilling seventh novel, The Night Sister, Jennifer McMahon has created a worthy addition to that roster: the Tower Motel. 

Located in the tiny town of London, Vermont, the hotel was the pride of the region when it opened in the 1950s. But after the interstate was built, bookings trickled down to nothing and the hotel fell into disrepair. Amy Slater grew up on the grounds of the Tower Motel in the 1980s. Raised by her grandmother, Charlotte, Amy grew up hearing stories of her mother’s instability and her aunt Sylvie’s mysterious disappearance in 1961. Family lore has it that Sylvie ran off to Hollywood in hopes of becoming Hitchcock’s new favorite blonde, but Amy has doubts. In the way of preteen girls, Amy and her best friend, Piper—often trailed by Piper’s younger sister, Margot—love to scare themselves by imaging more sinister reasons for Sylvie’s disappearance. 

Cut to the modern day: Piper and Amy are no longer best friends, but when Margot calls with the news that Amy has killed her son, her husband and herself, leaving only her 11-year-old daughter, Lou, alive, Piper knows she owes it to her old friend to investigate. The mystery leads her back to a discovery the girls made the summer their friendship ended—and to a dark Slater family secret.

As in her previous bestseller, The Winter People, McMahon draws from myth and legend for inspiration in crafting the tragedy that haunts the Slater family. But she has also created a powerful story of childhood friendship and sisterhood, as Piper and Margot work together to clear their old friend’s name. The Night Sister is a dark and compelling story that will keep you turning pages.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The creepy motel is a staple of the horror genre—think the Overlook or the Bates. In her chilling seventh novel, The Night Sister, Jennifer McMahon has created a worthy addition to that roster: the Tower Motel.
NonfictionBiography

Forging a life outside of the Kremlin

Review by Trisha Ping

Given the endless parade of biographies of Founding Fathers and Tudor monarchs, one might be forgiven for wondering whether there are any fresh candidates for a lengthy life study left. Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan (Villa Air-Bel) proves the answer is yes with Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, the masterfully told and meticulously researched story of a truly remarkable life.

Born in 1926 and raised in luxury in Moscow, the only daughter of Russia’s all-powerful leader Joseph Stalin, Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina (who later took her mother’s name of Alliluyeva) was beautiful, intelligent and privileged. But not even Stalin’s favorite child was exempt from the terror that his reign ushered in. Before her father’s death in 1953, Alliluyeva would suffer the loss of her mother, two brothers, numerous aunts and uncles and even her first love to death or deportation. Her father’s role in their fates was something she spent her entire life struggling to reconcile.

If that were all that ever happened to Alliluyeva, her story would still be worth reading. But life had much more in store for this proud, passionate and impulsive woman. After Stalin’s death, she was alternately lauded, spied on and reviled, depending on the prevailing politics of the day. She married three times and bore three children, two of whom she left behind in the Soviet Union after she took the remarkable step of defecting during the height of the Cold War, at the age of 41. It was a desperate attempt to escape her father’s shadow, but Alliluyeva was not able to put the past completely behind her—in fact, she shaped her writing career around it, beginning with a best-selling memoir that made her a millionaire. By the time of her death in 2011, Alliluyeva was living in near poverty in Wisconsin—an anything but predictable end for a Kremlin princess.

Sullivan weaves Svetlana’s fascinating story with cinematic grace, bringing settings as diverse as Moscow, India, England and the United States to life with equal ease. She also sustains a surprising amount of suspense—Alliluyeva’s defection in 1967 in particular has the tension of a spy thriller or an episode of “The Americans.” Combining archival research with journal excerpts and testimony from friends and family, most notably Alliluyeva’s youngest daughter, Olga, Stalin’s Daughter is an intimate portrait of a complicated woman who was a symbol to many but truly known by only a few.

 

Given the endless parade of biographies of Founding Fathers and Tudor monarchs, one might be forgiven for wondering whether there are any fresh candidates for a lengthy life study left. Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan (Villa Air-Bel) proves the answer is yes with Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, the masterfully told and meticulously researched story of a truly remarkable life.
Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

A literary legacy to die for

Review by Trisha Ping

In the chilling opening of Stephen King’s Finders Keepers, a sequel to his 2014 bestseller Mr. Mercedes, three words jolt elderly literary lion John Rothstein from a sound sleep, alerting him to the fact that he’s become the victim of a home invasion: “Wake up, genius.”

But these aren’t just any robbers. They’re led by Rothstein’s biggest (and baddest) fan, small-time criminal Morris Bellamy. Morris is unhappy that Rothstein has gone decades without publishing a new Jimmy Gold book (think John Updike’s Rabbit series), and he definitely doesn’t like that, in the last published novel, nonconformist Gold sold out to climb the corporate ladder at an advertising agency.

Morris kills Rothstein, stealing his money and his stash of notebooks—which, unbeknownst to him, include two more Jimmy Gold novels. But Morris is arrested for a different crime the next day, and the money and the notebooks are left to languish in a hiding place near his childhood home.

Fast-forward 35 years, and teenager Pete Saubers stumbles upon Morris’ treasure. The money comes in handy—Pete’s father is in chronic pain after being injured in the Center City Massacre, and the family is struggling financially due to medical bills and lost income—but the notebooks capture Pete’s imagination. Over the years, he falls in love with literature thanks to the story of Jimmy Gold. But when Morris is released from prison and realizes his hiding place has been discovered, Pete becomes his next target. 

Luckily, police detective Bill Hodges and his sidekicks, college student Jerome and tech-savvy but socially awkward Holly, who starred in Mr. Mercedes, are on the case, thanks to a call from Pete’s little sister, Tina, who’s worried about his strange behavior. 

At least one more novel featuring Hodges and the Center City Massacre victims is in the works. But the new characters shine as well: Pete is a worthy addition to King’s roster of memorable teen characters. He’s smart, brave and fiercely loyal to his family, especially Tina, but doesn’t always have the experience to make the right calls when it counts. Morris, on the other hand, is the sort of cold, calculating villain who will haunt your dreams. He’s spent decades waiting for those notebooks, and nothing is going to keep him from reading them.

King has long been interested in literary obsessions, and the divide between author and fan or creator and creation—think Misery, The Dark Half or Secret Window, Secret Garden. Finders Keepers continues to explore these ideas and adds another dimension: Pete and Morris are both willing to do a lot to hold on to Rothstein’s works. At what point does the hero become the villain? 

Readers will find themselves pondering this question and others at the close of this accomplished thriller.

 

In the chilling opening of Stephen King’s Finders Keepers, a sequel to his 2014 bestseller Mr. Mercedes, three words jolt elderly literary lion John Rothstein from a sound sleep, alerting him to the fact that he’s become the victim of a home invasion: “Wake up, genius.”

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