A Brief Lunacy [Hardcover]

Cynthia Thayer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2005

Jessie and Carl have made a terrible mistake. They should have been more careful. When Jonah came to their cabin in the Maine woods, asking to use the phone, they should never have let him in. But he told them his campsite had been robbed and he was stranded with no money and no gear. Jessie took pity on him. She was thinking about her own missing daughter, Sylvie, and hoping she was receiving the same kindness—wherever she was.

So, they invite him in, share their dinner with him, offer him a bed for the night. And they discover that this stranger at their table knows all about them. About Sylvie, their troubled daughter; about the secrets they haven't revealed to each other during forty years of marriage. By morning, they realize the young man has no intention of leaving.

Jessie and Carl are now captives in their own home.

The reader, too, is held captive by this novel that seems to unfold in real time. Over the next twenty-four hours, as Jonah's threats escalate, the couple struggle to outwit him and stay alive. Their attempts to escape force them to change roles, one discovering hidden strength, the other giving in to long-concealed weakness. Exposed, brutalized, and lost, each fights to hold on to sanity at a time when the edge of madness has never seemed so near.

Cynthia Thayer is a novelist who has taken her talent for drawing familiar characters—people we really know—to a new level. In this taut psychological thriller, she pushes them to their limits and shakes their secrets free.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An act of kindness leads to horrors in a sober, wrenching literary thriller. Carl and Jessie, a long-married and loving couple, are enjoying a quiet retirement in their isolated Maine house. Their one real worry is their schizophrenic, institutionalized daughter, Sylvie, who one day calls to say that she has run away from her facility. As the couple worries about Sylvie, a young man calling himself Jonah appears, claiming that his camping gear was stolen from a nearby site. Ignoring Carl's wariness, Jessie offers Jonah a bed for the night; Jonah responds by taking them hostage in their home. Jonah, they eventually learn, is Sylvie's boyfriend from the facility, a schizophrenic who plays a torturous series of psychological games with the couple that bring dark family histories to light. Thayer (Strong for Potatoes; A Certain Slant of Light) underplays the more lurid aspects of her story line, choosing instead to generate tension with dialogue and taut, well-crafted scenes as Carl and Jessie try to escape and Jonah's behavior careens toward deadly violence. Sylvie's eerie presence hovers in the background throughout, and the climax features a revelation about Carl that completely changes Jessie's impression of her protective, gentle husband. The dark suspense in this concentrated psychological character study makes for a genuine page-turner.
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From Booklist

Carl and Jessie Jensen are enjoying their retirement in the remote reaches of Maine until a stranded camper named Jonah arrives at their front door. While the kindhearted couple senses menace in the young man's eyes, they invite him to stay for dinner and spend the night. (Both wonder if Jonah is a friend of their mentally troubled daughter, Sylvie, who escaped from an area psychiatric home earlier that day.) The Jensens' worst fears are confirmed the following morning, as Jonah takes the pair hostage, insistent that he is fulfilling the wishes of God. The simmering scenario reaches a rolling boil as Jonah forces Carl, a French Gypsy who survived the Nazi concentration camps, to explain the patchwork of scars on his back and the German inscription on his violin. Jessie, meanwhile, plays mind games with Jonah as she furiously searches for a means of escape. Maine resident Thayer--Strong for Potatoes (1999), A Certain Slant of Light (2001)--creates relentless suspense in this taut literary chiller that pits the mad against the sane. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; First Edition edition (March 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565124448
• ISBN-13: 978-1565124448
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,401,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars nail biter, December 11, 2010

By 

E. S. Noyes "liza lives to read" (Maine) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Brief Lunacy (Paperback)

This is an evocative and scary story of a home invasion. The author combines lyrical writing with a thrilling plot, to good effect. It was so spot on that in places it's a hard story to read. Thayer does not pull punches. The plot is relentless, riveting and condensed down to the essentials. We see violence and redemptive love. We see character revealed by crisis, when everyday concerns and facades are stripped away. From the death camps of Nazi germany to the immediacy of the attack, the author takes a close look at evil, at goodness unmasked, at what survives and endures.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars usual story, weak characters, August 12, 2009

By 

M. Coffey "megthered" (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Brief Lunacy (Paperback)

This is the typical boogyman story. Would anyone in this day and age let a stranger into their house? I think not. These were weak people and the perfect victims. I, too, was hoping one of them would shake off the confusion that seemed to engulf them, and defend themselves. Oh well, I will not read her stories again.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Over the top...too much information and will Carl and Jesse ever "grow some?", March 7, 2007

By 

Book Scanner Nan (Bethesda, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Brief Lunacy (Hardcover)

I am currently listening to the audio version of this book. The book has it's good spots, but I can't wait to finish it. I find myself skipping portions now to get through the slow agony of wondering when Carl and Jesse are EVER going to regain THEIR sanity and really do something to stop the mentally ill "visitor" who mysteriously shows up at their home. It seems like they keep making excuses and rationalizing how they can't stop him. In reality, most people, even more spritely elderly folks would have made more efforts to stop someone from torturing and rape, even though "he had a gun." And then the stories of Carl's memories of his "real" childhood, is just too much being interspered with crazy Jonah and his bag of torture tricks. I just want this to end.