|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
HIDDEN is one of the strongest debut novels I've read in a while. Paul Jaskunas writes with literary flair, so much so that I'd almost go so far as to classify this a literary novel rather than a mystery. But a mystery it is -- the emptiness of a damaged brain, the appreciation of a simple life, an examination of what makes a true memory. Jaskunas does all these things with Maggie Wilson. Maggie is recovering from a terrible assault that left her near death and epileptic. On a late summer night, her husband beat her nearly to death, leaving her broken body to die on their guest room floor, blood soaking the rug, her foot jerking in spasms against the foot of a four poster bed. This is fact, and Maggie's version of the events is unvarnished and true. Her husband goes to jail for attempted murder. She continues on with her life, large parts of her memory missing, frightened, edgy. But an alternate truth arises, and her husband, Nathan Duke, is let out of prison when another man confesses to the crime. Maggie must examine her very core to see if her memories are true or fractured. Writing from the point of view of a brain trauma victim allows Jaskunas to focus on little things. The descriptions of Maggie's epileptic seizures make them seem a beautiful, not terrible, event. The world she lives in, her husband's family home, the Indiana countryside, her brief forays into town to work part-time at the local newspaper, her elderly neighbor with whom she sips gin and watches the sun go down, all are rendered in perfect detail. The flashbacks to Maggie's courtship and eventual marriage to Nate are palpable events; you live the moments as Maggie does, a remembered sense of security permeating the pages. Writing with this level of intensity is bound to fail at some point. Even talking about it seems a bit sacrilegious. Jaskunas maintains the concentration of prose through the very end of the novel, where I was left with a vague uneasiness, a feeling that I wasn't entirely sure what had just happened. Where some may find fault with that, I believe the writer was making a point. HIDDEN takes some time to fully absorb, and I will probably read it again soon, to find what I missed the first time around.
Reviewed by J. T. Ellison, May 2006
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
