Saturday, March 14, 2020

THE OTHER MRS. :: Mary Kubica

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

"I'm not going to tell you everything. Just the things I think you should know." These thoughts from the mind of a Mary Kubica character perfectly encapsulate her maddeningly tantalizing style. The Other Mrs., her fifth standalone thriller, solidifies Kubica (When the Lights Go Out) as a master of the multi-perspective mind-twister.

Sadie and Will Foust leave plenty behind in Chicago when they relocate to Portland, Maine--most of it bad: Will's affair, Sadie's legal problems at work and oldest son Otto's expulsion from school. Unfortunately, their "fresh start" is marred by its own troubles. The home bequeathed to them by Will's sister, who hung herself in the attic, comes with his openly hostile teen niece. There's history they just can't shake, including threatening messages, inklings of Will's infidelities and Sadie's random disappearing acts. When a neighbor is murdered, all signs point to something amiss in the Foust home.

Kubica dangles bits of bait only to yank them from view and replace them with three more. Despite the swirl of characters and activity, past and present, the narrative always feels under control. Its outlandishness is a purposeful, compelling level of chaos that Kubica deftly manipulates. Through the voices of Sadie, Camille (Will's former mistress) and a mysterious, mistreated girl nicknamed Mouse, Kubica doles out a psychological whopper of a tale. The Other Mrs. is a roller coaster with tracks that dip from view and turn unexpectedly, creating unease enhanced by a compulsion to race forward for an answer to the burning question: "Who is Mouse?"
at
Labels: , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

About Malcolm Avenue Review

I was lucky enough to be born and raised in a nifty, oak-shaded ranch house on Malcolm Avenue, a wide-laned residential street with little through traffic, located amid the foothills of Northern California. It was on that street and in that house I learned most of my adolescent life lessons, and many grown-up ones to boot. Malcolm Avenue was "home" for more than thirty years.

It was on Malcolm Avenue, through and with my family and the other families that made up our neighborhood of characters, that I first learned about and gained an appreciation for the things I continue to love the most to this day: music, animals, photography, sports, television/movies and, of course, books.

I owe a debt of gratitude to that life on Malcolm Avenue. It gave me a sense of community and friendship, support and adventure. For better and worse, life on that street likely had the biggest impact on the person I've become. So this blog, and the things I write here, are all, at their base level, a little bit of a love letter to Malcolm Avenue.

Labels

  © Blogger templates Newspaper by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP