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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nailbiting, heartrending, and true, July 20, 2006
What a disturbingly beautiful book. I read this in one big gulp because the mystery was too compelling to put on hold. In that genre it reminded me most of Ross Macdonald, not because of formal qualities but because it was more about the mystery of relationship than the actual crime. As in her previous book, Cammie McGovern writes with tortuous brilliance about betrayal and love. At the heart of the story is the mystery of Cara's autistic child, Adam, but her broken friendships with Suzette and Kevin, which prefigure and establish the lifework of raising Adam, are equally compelling. If Adam is a mystery, so is Cara. She seems destined to have become the mother of this child, even though there's nothing divine or cosmic leading her down that path. Her interests, her failures, and her nature lead her to become a good mother and a detective of the human soul. Cara is a wonderfully flawed person, a richly reflective and loving mother and friend. She confronts the "autism epidemic" without much anger or rancor, perhaps because her choices have led her to be a single mother and maybe because she's learning what she needs to learn. I kept being struck by how well-equipped she was for loving Adam, even though she often feels inadequate and certainly is not as well-supported by her community as she might be. Like many protagonists she has a maddening tendency to go it alone. In the course of the novel she learns to rely on others, which helps her let Adam do the same. That's always good to see, especially given Adam's autism and her fear and isolation. The secondary characters are vivid and moving - especially the other children. Most of them are somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but after a while that seems like a meaningless distinction. The term differently-abled took on real meaning for me. McGovern's narrative is shared by enough capable, perceptive people to make us appreciate each person's perceptual gifts. One must do that to solve a mystery - at least in our day and age. At several points characters think they've found the essential clue, and the reader goes along with it. In the end, the situation is too complex for the "lone gunman" solution. Of course, that's also true of autism or of life. It takes a village - and speaking of that, I loved the small-town ambiance of this novel. At first Cara seems to have left her past behind, like a person who has moved to the big city, but over the course of the novel her past keeps knocking until she turns to face it. Thanks to the setting, that movement seems natural instead of contrived. This is a beautifully written work, but what you'll remember most are the intensity of feeling and the author's honest account of parenting an autistic child. I closed the book in awe and wonder - this life is beautiful and heartrending. So is the book.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Breath Stealer, June 10, 2006
I am a lover of mystery novels, and Eye Contact more than fills my requirements for a satisfying read. The book offers a gruesome and unfortunately believable crime, humanly flawed characters, psychologically disturbing yet frighteningly normal suspects, and a realistic yet uplifting conclusion. Although I was initially drawn to Eye Contact because of the mystery element (which certainly kept me turning the pages eager to find out "who done it"), the mystery is not what sticks with me a week after finishing the book. Ultimately, Eye Contact is a book about parenting. McGovern's quiet and occasionally heartbreaking insights into the parent/child relationship take my breath away. Eye Contact captures the essential paradox of parenthood: loving our children for who they are within the limitations of who we are.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Succeeds as an inside look at autism; fails as a psychological thriller, October 16, 2006
As an inside look at autism and special needs families, McGovern's novel is a five-star winner. As a psychological thriller, however, it is painfully terrible. On a literary technical level, it is an enjoyable read. As a novel about female friendships, well, one must wonder what kind of alternate reality McGovern's personal friendships exist in.
The novel opens with a criminal mystery--two children have disappeared at recess. Hours later, the body of the girl is discovered, and the only witness to the murder is her autistic nine-year-old schoolmate Adam. The story is told from a half a dozen perspectives, but it is truly driven by Adam's mother Cara, a single mom who has devoted her entire life to raising her special needs son.
McGovern's characters either have special needs (autism, brain damage, social disorders, agoraphobia, and addiction) or have personal and professional lives which are consumed by such conditions. As a mother, Cara has shifted parenting philosophies during her son's growth, in a constant struggle between making him as "normal" as possible and admitting that letting follow his own innate preferences makes him the happiest. Do you ask the world to treat an autistic son as a normal child, or do you admit upfront that your child requires special accommodations?
In addition to her parenting experience, Cara had grade- and high school experience with a friend who was brain damaged as a result of a household accident. She has lifelong guilt and doubt about the way she related to her friend in their youth.
For all its strengths in explore the complex emotions surrounding disabilities, as a thriller, Eye Contact is a convoluted mess. The novel suffers from an abundance of characters, some of which drop off in importance, and others who pop up out of nowhere. Their lives are loosely interconnected at the opening of the story and end up in a tangled web (with dozens of skeletons in the closet) by the end. Throughout the novel, certain personal histories just don't make sense, and McGovern's attempt to wrap it all up at the end doesn't justify the flimsiness in the exposition of the tale.
The most frustrating aspect of the book is the true crime, which has terrific potential and a lackluster resolution. It is "solved" a half-dozen times, each with a different culprit. By the time the real killer is found, the reader is exhausted from having been toyed with, and Cara's personal history is (not convincingly) tied to the entire incident.
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