Customer Reviews

Fragile: A Novel

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Unger goes off the beaten track in this novel, but not so far as for her work to be unrecognizable. While contemporary, this mystery dredges up a town's past and reawakens dark secrets that have altered the lives of those involved. Not far from New York City, The Hollows enjoys a small town identity, neighbors who have known each other since grade school. The only anomaly is the younger generation, infected by the angst of the times and the usual anti-social behaviors of adolescence, once happy and playful children become sulking teenagers, no longer as pliable or as willing to endure their parents' failings or expectations. Unger uses this generation gap to frame her story, as Maggie, a psychologist returned from NYC to marry a high-school football player turned detective, Jones Cooper, the two raising a son, Ricky. Once a sweet, joyful little boy, Ricky has morphed to a sullen teen, resisting his mother's overtures and in constant conflict with his father.

The twist is in the secret history of The Hollows. When Ricky's girlfriend, Charlene, disappears, everyone remembers another disappearance from years ago, the death of a classmate that has reverberated through the lives of the main characters and left many with uneasy consciences. And for all the disaffection of the younger generation, more than one older resident is disturbed when long-buried secrets are unearthed. While the father-son conflict is exacerbated when Jones investigates Charlene's whereabouts, Maggie jumps to her son's defense to avoid concerns about the state of her marriage, counseling patients in an office connected to her home. Much of the drama is stirred up by Maggie's fears and lack of professional boundaries, but there is no shortage of guilty parties as Unger taps into the small town psyche of The Hollows. Sometimes obvious, sometimes clever, Unger indulges in a lot of emotionalism and the dashed expectations of youth. But that is her style- and her charm- as a writer, the murky territory of memory and forgiveness. Luan Gaines/2010.

Lisa Unger writes of a wonderful little town in New York, whose secrets are deadly. The Hollows, a sleepy town of upright citizens, seems to be plagued with loosing young girls. Two such cases converge one day as a young girl runs away, or is she abducted? This parallels a similar tragedy decades earlier. The whole town is interwoven in each others' lives, so it is no surprise that everyone in this small town has everything to do with every event.

The overall story is bogged down by too many instances of intertwined lives, back stories, and little climaxes. Every page has the coming of disaster, but quickly resolves itself. The overall plot of the two abductions fluctuate in an interesting suspense, but this suspense is lost as the story continues to drag on and on and on.

Yet the worst problem with this novel is that Unger assumes you cannot get her point: we are fragile, interconnected, imperfect, yet beautiful. But she continually hits you over the head with everything.

After a while I found myself saying enough already, resolve this. And she eventually does, and the story wraps up perfectly with a perfect, yet fragile bow.

If Unger had assumed more from her audience, trimmed some of the fat and left some things to the readers' imaginations, it would have been more suspenseful novel. It was an interesting story, it just needed better execution.

From "When Jones Cooper was younger, he didn't believe in mistakes" to 323 pages later and "As she told them all about her buried memory, she felt an awe at how all their separate lives were twisted and tangled, growing over an around one another...,"
FRAGILE enchants. It is a sensitive, penetrating story of complex people burdened by the past.

Jones, a cop,lives with his psychologist wife, Maggie, and rebellious teenage son, Ricky, in The Hollows, a small insular town outside of New York City. It's the kind of place that Maggie had once found dull, constraining, but now finds comforting as people know each other, and seemingly care for one another. It seems that Ricky might benefit from some observation as he's a punk kid with a silver hoop in his nose, sometimes referred to as "Johnny Rotten" by his dad. Try as Maggie may she can't seem to reach Ricky any more but loves him with all her heart, remembering "...how pure and unblemished, how soft and pink his baby skin had been."

Ricky is going with Charlene, an undesirable companion in the eyes of Maggie and Jones. She is "a little girl lost hiding behind black eyeliner and vamp red lipstick." However, Maggie does her best to understand, to accept Charlene because she loves Ricky.

However, understanding and acceptance go out the window when Charlene vanishes. To some her disappearance is a frightening reminder of a teenager who was abducted and murdered years ago when Maggie herself was a teenager. Jones is leading the investigation in efforts to find Charlene and, shocking to Maggie, begins to look very closely at their son. A once tranquil community is once again shattered by a mysterious disappearance.

In a desperate attempt to prove Ricky innocent of any wrongdoing Maggie begins an investigation of her own and makes a shocking discovery.

No novice at creating suspenseful, gripping narratives Lisa Unger has once again penned a stay-up-all-night story.

Enjoy!

- Gail Cooke

I was thinking 2-stars for this one but I must be feeling Grinch-y and considering how painful it was to finish this book, it's 1-star for now! Thriller? Mystery? Where? I think everything was laid out and nothing was left to question. There were way, way, WAY too many characters, all living their "perfect" little lives in their "perfect" little town when really they just lived each day, full of angst. None of them were likable and I couldn't feel sorry for any of them. It just dragged and dragged - not a pleasurable read.

The premise sounded so interesting. There were just too many characters - all a bit stereotyped, all unlikeable. It was hard to keep track and really hard to care about keeping track. I found myself flipping back to remind myself who was who and flipping ahead to see if there was any point to reading the rest of the book. I was about half way through when I decided it was just too painfully slow to continue.

Lisa writes in such a way that grabbed me and held me captive. She has a terrific way of meshing everyone in this story so that their lives all connect to the circumstances that unfold. I was hooked within the first 20 pages. It was easy to follow, and written in a way that told the story from all the different characters perspectives. Each chapter has smaller sections broken down by each characters outlook. Sometimes at the end of each characters viewpoint, there was a cliffhanger that made me want to read faster to find out what happens. I couldn't wait to finish it to find out what happens, however, I wanted to savor every moment of this book. I thought every main character in this book was very well developed. There is some disturbing subject matter and vulgar language, so if that bothers you, you might want to pass on reading it.

I have ranked Lisa as one of my favorite authors after reading this book. I will be purchasing more from her. This was an excellent suspenseful book. I highly recommend it if you love suspense type thriller books.

This book really captured my attention , and as I thought I figured out the story there was a new twist to it.Maggie , a phyciatrist is married to a town cop Jones. The story is about teenage rebellion and teens reacting an a whim and how it affects their lives as they age. The story tells how people are affected by the deciosions they make as teens affect parenting.The story captures each moment, and keeps you wanting to know more. I really enjoyed this author an look forward to reading more books.

I wanted to like this book; I purchased it to read during a flight to Colorado (I always get a good, new book when I fly these days) but it was clotted with characters and flashbacks and extraneous details. I had to keep flipping back to see who was who -- good thing I hadn't downloaded it on my Kindle! There also seems to be something going on these days in novels when the POV comes from many different characters -- authors think it's cute to begin a chapter and go on for pages w/o identifying who's speaking. This becomes annoying very fast. Also felt the tie-in with the exterminator who wants to write a novel about a girl who disappeared when he was young was terribly contrived. His only real reason for inclusion was the removal of the raccoons in the attic.

There are so many books and movies out there that describe the dreariness and the hopelessness of the suburban lifestyle, that one might balk at reading yet another one. Lisa Unger's Fragile, however, is so well written that it is definitely worth a try. I haven't read any other books by this author yet but now I will check out her previous work for sure.

The narrative perspective in this novel shifts constantly from one character to another. We get to hear the innermost thoughts, hopes and fears of a psychologist who feels she is losing both her teenage son and her husband, a pest exterminator whose life has been a complete disappointment and who is trying to rebuild himself through love, an abused misunderstood teenager who is struggling to create an adult identity for herself, an aging teacher who is refusing to confront old age, and many others. There is a couple of cases where the introduction of yet another perspective seems unjustified and quite redundant but overall the author manages these shifts in the point of view pretty well.

The plot of the novel is intriguing, and there are many curious insights into human nature in this book. Fragile would be perfect if it were not for the last 20 pages or so. For one, it felt like the author simply didn't know when it was time to let her characters go and put a full stop to the plot. The story drags on long after everything is resolved, needlessly rehashing the obvious. The entire last part of the book consists of characters plunging into psychobabble-laden monologues that are completely incompatible with the way these characters behaved during the entire novel.

Overall, this is a very good novel with an ending that is somewhat of a letdown.

Maggie and Jones are the parents of Ricky, a teen who is suspected in the disappearance of his girlfriend Charlene. Charlene's disappearance is similar to a situation in the same small town, when Jones was a teen.

This was an intriguing read, with the current and past mysteries revealed bit by bit alongside each other. Since it occurs in a small town and only one generation apart, many of the same characters are involved in both mysteries. I enjoyed the slow unveiling of the different character's motivations. The book is well-paced, picking up steam toward the end.