Past comes to life in ‘Lost Carousel’
‘Gone So Long’ takes its time, but is worth the trip
By Lincee Ray
(Berkley), by
Cady Drake is a loner who is perfectly content hiding behind the lens of her camera. After a sudden, unexpected loss, her friend lines up a photography job for Cady in France. Cady’s assignment is simple: shoot Parisian carousels for a coffee-table book.
The subject matter may seem random to some, but Cady has an affection for carousels, thanks to a gift she received when she was younger. Her eloquent wooden rabbit is thought to be sculpted by the famous French carousel carver Gustave Bayol. She’s determined to find out more about its history, especially when she discovers a photo and love note hidden in the rabbit’s belly.
Cady’s travels take her all around France, but she finds herself drawn to Chateau Clement for its rich history and mysterious rumors surrounding its once beautiful carousel. The chateau’s crusty owner wants nothing to do with the American or her nosy questions. But Cady manages to gain the old man’s trust and soon finds herself uncovering decades of clues and photographs pertaining to the lost carousel. And in doing so, she exposes long-kept secrets about a prominent family in Provence.
Author Juliet Blackwell is clearly enamored by art, history and the allure of Paris. She takes something as simple as a carousel and weaves an intricate story that spans generations. Blackwell uses an outsider’s passion to shine a light into the dark past of a broken family and how a sweet, wooden rabbit can bring them together again.
‘‘Gone So Long”
(W.W. Norton & Co), by
An Andre Dubus III novel is a slow burn – never so searing that you can’t turn the page, but incrementally hotter each time you do.
“Gone So Long” isn’t a thriller, but it’s taut with tension. Dubus manages to keep readers on edge despite telling a tale in which very little happens in the present.
The story begins in the voice of Susan, a daughter staking out the house of her father’s parole officer, then abruptly switches to third person on page two, as fragments of memories return to Susan and we learn that the novel will hinge on a decades-old, unthinkable crime.
The crime isn’t the central mystery of the story, and Dubus trickles out details as he moves in and out of Susan’s head and the head of her father, Daniel. At its heart, “Gone So Long” is a meditation on regret and anger – how people process and cope with it throughout their lives and how destructive it can be to keep it bottled up.
Susan’s father served almost 15 years in prison and has lived a life of redemption apart from his family. He drives the elderly to doctor’s appointments and helps a battered woman on the street late one night. It’s his decision to find his daughter that sets the present-day plot in motion.
But it takes hundreds of pages for Daniel to travel from his Massachusetts single-wide – “a forty-by-forty patch of ground he did not earn” – to Florida, where Susan works as a writing professor even as she struggles to write her own story. In that time, readers go deep inside the heads of the various characters, who in addition to Susan and Daniel include Lois, the grandmother/ mother-in-law, for whom forgiveness is impossible. There are dozens of flashbacks as we learn about
This cover image released by W. W. Norton shows ‘Gone So Long,’ a
novel by Andre Dubus III. (AP)
Susan’s promiscuous youth and her father’s decade and a half in prison.
The characters are complex, but Dubus’ writing is simple as he fleshes them out. Susan as she unburies her past on the page: “... she was beginning to glimpse something real just inches and feet ahead of her, something she could only find with words, words that were not lies.”
And Daniel, on his southern road trip ending who knows how, pondering that fateful day that changed so many lives: “(He) can still see the way her chin was raised up like she was going to do it with or without him, and maybe that’s when he began to know too that she did not love him all the way yet, and so everything he did after that moment he did like a man trying to catch and keep a dove ...”
To say much more would spoil the enjoyment of the novel. “Gone So Long” is a multilayered character study, told in flashbacks and
This cover image released by Park Row shows ‘Under My Skin,’ a
novel by Lisa Unger. (AP)
memoir excerpts and present-day prose, slowly revealing the strength and resilience of its two main female characters and ending with a hint of hope.
“Under My Skin”
(Park Row), by
A woman’s life spirals out of control as she battles with the loss of her husband in Lisa Unger’s latest psychological thriller, “Under My Skin.”
Poppy’s husband, Jack, was murdered a year ago while he was jogging through a city park in New York. When she received the news, the pain was so intense, she blacked out and ended up having no memory of several days. In fact, her next memory has her disoriented and wearing clothes she doesn’t recognize.
She’s tried to move on, and has even tried dating again, but no one comes close to Jack. It also doesn’t help that the murder was never solved.
Poppy begins to see a therapist, but the nightmares grow and she starts seeing a strange man wearing a gray hoodie who seems to be stalking her. Is this the killer coming back for her, or is she imagining him? Since she sometimes sees her dead husband, she’s not sure if the stalker – or anything else – is real.
Can Poppy climb out of her grief to find the truth? If she can, she will quickly discover that sometimes the facts are worse than manufactured reality.
Unger knows how to craft a tale that not only incorporates characters that feel real, but also weaves a baffling puzzle that keeps readers guessing. For a story that is steeped in grief and darkness, Unger’s steady hand keeps hope shining throughout, so it’s not difficult to enjoy this captivating thriller. (AP)