"Extraordinary . . . fascinating and detailed . . . this is a story that needs to be told."—Elle
—USA Today
“A captivating thriller.”—More magazine
—Rocky Mountain News
“Outstanding . . . a haunting eyes-wide openness.”—Daily Candy
—The Washington Post
"An amalgamation of autobiography, true crime and melodrama. . . . The story is so engaging... a credit to this narrator's wonderfully appealing voice: funny, frustrated, likable, totally candid about her desires and failings...The perfect book club book."—Washington Post
—USA Today
"...a page-turning good read...A tautly written story with sympathetic characters and evocative storytelling." –USA Today
—Elle Magazine
“This exceptional, riveting novel will haunt you long after you've reached the end.”—Rocky Mountain News
—Working Mother
"The perfect book club book...An amalgamation of autobiography, true crime and melodrama...The story is so engaging...A credit to this narrator's wonderfully appealing voice: funny, frustrated, likable, totally candid about her desires and failings." —The Washington Post
"A page-turning good read...A tautly written story with sympathetic characters and evocative storytelling." —USA Today
"Extraordinary...Fascinating and detailed...This is a story that needs to be told." —Elle, #1 Reader's Pick
"[A] haunting page-turner...A compelling look at what it means to be a mother and a wife." —Working Mother
"...a page-turning good read...A tautly written story with sympathetic characters and evocative storytelling." –USA Today
Outstanding . . . a haunting eyes-wide openness.”—Daily Candy
“This exceptional, riveting novel will haunt you long after you've reached the end.”—Rocky Mountain News
"An amalgamation of autobiography, true crime and melodrama. . . . The story is so engaging... a credit to this narrator's wonderfully appealing voice: funny, frustrated, likable, totally candid about her desires and failings...The perfect book club book."—Washington Post
How could a mother kill her children? This breathtaking first novel from photojournalist Kogan (Shutterbabe) attempts a heart-wrenching answer. Elizabeth "Lizzie" Burns Steiger, a 41-year-old TV producer/journalist, has a hallucination while watching a performance of Medea at a Manhattan theater; she sees her best friend in first grade, April Cassidy, who was killed by April's depressed mother, Adele, in 1972 in Potomac, Md., along with April's sister. In addition to exploring her memories in therapy, Lizzie interviews the Cassidys' former neighbor and others who knew the family for a proposed cable network documentary, but a priceless Pandora's box-tapes of Adele with her psychiatrist-provides the most startling revelations. Kogan skillfully interweaves Lizzie's struggles with her troubled marriage, parenting and a personal trauma shared in the Balkans with a former lover in this unflinching portrait of filicide, which still manages to find light in the darkness of a very disturbing subject. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Debut novel from TV producer and photojournalist Kogan (Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War, 2001). In the middle of a performance of Medea, Elizabeth Burns faints. Just before she passes out, she has a vivid, visceral recollection of April Cassidy-someone Elizabeth hasn't thought about for 35 years. Once upon a time, they had been best friends, but April disappeared from Elizabeth's memory just as completely as she disappeared from their first-grade classroom. After remembering this lost little girl, Elizabeth becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her. It doesn't take long to discover that April's mother, Adele, killed both her daughters and herself, but Elizabeth still wants to know why. As she begins to build her story, Kogan deftly exploits the conventions of the murder mystery to create a sense of tension and uncertainty, but the basic facts of the central murder are never in doubt. The mystery Elizabeth is exploring is the mystery of motive-which is, at its core, the essentially unknowable mystery of each human self. These opening chapters are eerie and gripping. A TV producer, Elizabeth uses her job as an excuse to exhume this long-buried tragedy, and, as she digs deeper, she uncovers unnerving parallels between her life and Adele's. Both women are torn between career and motherhood, and both are unhappy in their marriages. Then she finds transcripts of Adele's sessions with a psychiatrist, and the whole novel falls apart. These documents are about as nuanced-and about as convincing-as a dramatic reenactment on Unsolved Mysteries. Adele ceases to be a complex and tragically compelling figure and becomes, instead, a cartoonishly facile exemplar of postpartumpsychosis. Elizabeth, too, devolves into a rickety collection of neuroses, and Kogan provides explanations for each that make it seem as if there is an obvious, inevitable connection between trauma and symptom. The ending is both predictable and absurd, and Kogan provides a coda that is so sentimental and improbable that it's an insult to the reader. Grossly disappointing. Agent: David McCormick/McCormick & Williams Literary Agency
"An amalgamation of autobiography, true crime and melodrama. . . . The story is so engaging... a credit to this narrator's wonderfully appealing voice: funny, frustrated, likable, totally candid about her desires and failings...The perfect book club book."—Washington Post
A captivating thriller.”—More magazine
This exceptional, riveting novel will haunt you long after you've reached the end.”—Rocky Mountain News
"An amalgamation of autobiography, true crime and melodrama. . . . The story is so engaging... a credit to this narrator's wonderfully appealing voice: funny, frustrated, likable, totally candid about her desires and failings...The perfect book club book."—Washington Post
Outstanding . . . a haunting eyes-wide openness.”—Daily Candy
A captivating thriller.”—More magazine
