Synopses & Reviews
Review
"In this read-it-in-a-sitting thriller, Rafael Yglesias turns the conventional 'damsel in distress' story upside-down. Molly's best friend Wendy is murdered, presumably by her repellant husband Ben, but instead of being cast automatically as the next victim, Molly becomes the stalker, pursuing Ben with false sympathy and friendship. For Molly desperately wants to secure custody of Wendy's seven-year-old daughter Naomi, so she takes on the roles of mother—chaperoning a birthday party, supervising homework, reading bedtime stories—and, more dangerously, of wife, cooking the meals, sharing intimate late-night conversations and more. When, remembering the conventions of the genre, we wonder about Ben's motives for the murder, Yglesias abruptly refocuses our attention on Molly's disturbing behavior, especially through her disintegrating narrative skills. The trouble we encounter in following Molly's thinking mirrors her own failure to control herself through the act of narration. True, this authorial collapse does obscure more than it illuminates the end of the novel. Moreover, the novel too simplistically lays Molly's peculiarities at the door of Reaganomics and the egocentric yuppie culture (whenever he wants us to see Molly at her worst, the author sends her to her weight room to focus on her body). Nevertheless, Yglesias has produced an entertaining and absorbing challenge to the confectionery of his peers." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)