The Shades: A Novel

by Evgenia Citkowitz

Overview

“Elegantly unnerving.” —New York Times Book Review

A year has passed since Catherine and Michael Hall lost their teenage daughter in a car accident, leaving them and their sixteen-year-old son, Rowan, reeling in the aftermath of the tragedy. Catherine withdraws to Hamdean, the family’s apartment in a Georgian country manor, where the mysteries of the past begin to collide with the truth of the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357585
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/22/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Evgenia Citkowitz was born in New York and educated in London and the United States. Both The Shades and Ether, her debut novella and short story collection, were New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice picks. She lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

"An absorbing book by an author who knows how to create organic suspense without ever overplaying her hand.… Intricately plotted and perfectly paced.… An excellent debut novel that deals heavily with death, but still feels alive, compassionate and full of truths."

NPR - Michael Schaub

"A dense, powerful novel."

Vogue - Chloe Schama and Bridget Read

"Brilliantly constructed, The Shades is ghostly and alive, cerebral and sensuous, an absolutely riveting read."

Los Angeles Times - Scott Cheshire

"If you’re looking for a mystery to keep you on the edge of your seat, add this electrifying new novel by Evgenia Citkowitz to your reading list."

Southern Living - Caroline Rogers

"This psychological thriller explores the mysteries surrounding a family still reeling from profound tragedy, and the terrifying uncertainty that meets their relocation in a distant country manor."

Entertainment Weekly - David Canfield

"With a deceptively light touch and an almost ethereal atmosphere, debut novelist Citkowitz delves deeply into themes of loss and grief, reality and illusion, and growth and stagnation.… [The Shades] is richly layered with meaning and allusions to myth and art that make it an engaging and rewarding read."

Booklist

"When an intriguing young woman turns up at the family’s country house and strikes up a relationship with the family’s matriarch, Catherine, a mystery is set in motion, lending the firmly contemporary The Shades a quiet echo of such classic psychological thrillers as The Turn of the Screw and Rebecca."

Vanity Fair - Julia Vitale and Keziah Weir

"This haunted tale follows a couple mourning the loss of their teenage daughter.… [The Shades] harkens back to such ghostly thrillers as du Maurier’s Don’t Look Back."

CrimeReads

05/14/2018
Citkowitz’s ethereal latest (following Ether) dissects the messy tangle of past and present in the aftermath of a young woman’s death. A fatal automobile accident involving 16-year-old Rachel and her secret boyfriend fractures the Hall family. Rachel’s mother, Catherine, remains in the family’s second home in Kent, disengaged from life and her work as a successful art gallery owner until the arrival of a mysterious young woman who claims to have lived in the house as a child. Catherine’s growing interest in the stranger after months of depressed detachment heartens her husband, Michael, who has been spending his days and nights in London and yearning for a return to easily connecting with his wife. Their reticent son, Rowan, flees to a remote, liberal boarding school to reshape his life away from his sister’s death. His sudden, passionate fixation on the threat of global warming and his decision to drop out of school jolts the family from their long patterns of uncommunicative coexistence. Citkowitz meanders through her scant plot with ample atmospheric detours through the family’s past. Her depiction of the delicate, complicated attachment of siblings is particularly touching. The prose sparkles as she unpacks emotional wounds, but the threads of story remain too hazy and incomplete to be fully satisfying. This compact family drama captures the thinly masked desperation of grief with an eerie undercurrent. (July)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2018-04-16
A couple begins to unravel after the sudden death of their 16-year-old daughter in Citkowitz's (Ether, 2010) haunting portrait of unsparing grief.In the year since Rachel was killed in a car accident alongside her secret boyfriend, her parents have retreated into separate worlds. Catherine, a high-powered gallerist, a tastemaker, has taken up residence at their aged country house in Kent, where once they'd planned to retire—a thought now inconceivable. Michael remains at the family home in London; there has, he reflects, always been "a remoteness that created a space between them that he never understood," though the gulf is wider now, the initial wave of grief having worn off. Meanwhile, their teenage son, Rowan, sweet and stoic, has fled to boarding school, having made the arrangements for his escape himself. And so Catherine is alone when a mysterious young woman arrives at the house, claiming to have lived there as a child. She is reinvigorated by the girl, striking up what she believes to be the beginnings of a friendship. But the relationship soon darkens; the girl, Catherine learns, may not be who she seems. Though the novel is short, with nothing extra, it seems to encompass lifetimes: Time and space expand and contract, the present blurring seamlessly—unsettlingly—with the past. We learn about Catherine's parents, her father's art, her mother's suicide; her courtship with Michael; the day of Rachel's death. But we also see the present: the marriage and the house; Rowan becoming increasingly obsessed with climate change at school. The mystery of the girl and the novel's murky ending are arguably the least interesting elements of the book, which is driven less by the naked plot than by the exquisite strength of Citkowitz's writing—spare, arresting, and emotionally precise.A thoroughly modern novel with a Gothic feel; a fully realized vision.

Kirkus Reviews