Synopses & Reviews
Cyrus Collingwood, age nineteen, suspects that he may be a genius without a calling. He is a year-round resident of East Sooke, Vancouver Island, and has a natural resentment for the summer cottagers who descend on its rocky beaches. When two vacationing American couples arrive--old friends with a complicated history--they become his obsession. Greg and Nicholas are engaged in an academic collaboration that looks more like competition; Samina and Laurel are old friends who have grown apart and developed a strange jealousy. Cyrus spies on the cottagers through their windows, then begins to insinuate himself into their lives. When one of the cottagers goes missing, no one will look at any of the others the same way again. Combining the eerie suspense of Patricia Highsmith and the literary fortitude of Ian McEwan, is about the discrepancy between the lives we live and the versions of those lives that trail behind us.
Review
A complex, intelligent novel.
Review
"Accomplished in its literary architecture,...sophisticated in its portrait of the tensions between vacationers and year-rounders, and chillingly believable." Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
"Wise to human foibles, rich with precise and amusing observations." Esquire
Review
"A thinking person's thriller....Klimasewiski catches the subtle dynamics between people and phrases things in a way that's original, yet rings true." St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Review
"A complex, intelligent novel." New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Combining the eerie suspense of Patricia Highsmith and the literary fortitude of Ian McEwan, The Cottagers is about the discrepancy between the lives we live and the versions of those lives that trail behind us.
Synopsis
"Klimasewiski brings the final curtain down with a satisfyingly wicked twist....A remarkable debut."--Los Angeles Times Book Review
About the Author
Marshall N. Klimasewiski's stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Best American Short Stories. He teaches writing at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he lives.