Customer Reviews

An Invisible Woman

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The premise of this book is great -- a well-to-do woman whose husband is killed and she doesn't know who to trust. She discovers she can hide in plain view, disguising herself by not wearing designer clothes and makeup. (Although I have to say, I think it's a bit of a stretch -- women may look different without makeup but they wouldn't be unrecognizable to their best friends and ex-husbands.) But here are my problems with the book. The tone and voice of the opening pages differ radically from the rest of the book. It's almost like the book started in one direction and then switched gears but the author never went back and rewrote it. The children are precocious, as are the daughter's friend's family (good-hearted but poor black people) who help them. The scenes are so overwritten they read like a joke. The ending wraps up quickly and not in a satisfying manner. I think it could have been a much better book than it is.

If you were to look up the definition of "New York socialite" in the dictionary, one gets the feeling you would find Kealy Ryerson's picture beside it. Born into a wealthy family, Kealy is married to James Ryerson, a wildly successful if improbably principled defense attorney; has two children enrolled in private schools; and a maid to clean up after her on a daily basis. On the cusp of middle age, she is able to afford the surgical touch-ups and carefully applied cosmetics that let her rage against the dimming, if not dying, of the light. Her life and accruements vanish from her in the space of a few short minutes. She receives a terse telephone call from her husband, telling her in no uncertain terms to gather up their children and leave the country. Minutes later, he is dead, and Kealy is on her own, and on the run, in ways she never could have imagined.

So begins AN INVISIBLE WOMAN, Anne Strieber's debut novel. This is an incredibly ambitious work, though Strieber's reach occasionally exceeds her grasp. There are a few problems here. The pacing of this work is intermittent. Quite a bit happens at the beginning, but then the reader is left stumbling in Kealy's wake for just a bit too long as she and her children find that their avenues of escape are cut off even as they are pursued by the same shadowy assassins who have killed not only her husband but also his private investigator and a New York District attorney with whom James Ryerson was improbably having lunch.

Daughter Allison, a bit too precocious for her own good, just happens to be school roomies with a streetwise black teenager named Lushawn Davis, who just happens to have a noble but shady uncle who plays a major role later on. The Davis family apartment becomes the port in the dangerous storm gathering around what is left of the Ryerson family. Kealy soon finds that not only is a group of hit men after her, but also that the entire city is looking for her, thanks to a reward being offered by the police department, whose chief is --- interestingly enough --- her ex-husband.

As I indicated, AN INVISIBLE WOMAN is a complicated book, and it takes Strieber a number of pages to set up the events. But don't dash yet; once things are in place, this tale becomes quite interesting indeed. Kealy finds herself hiding in the middle of a marginal working class neighborhood without her clothes, makeup, or any of the adornments that tell the world who she is and where she comes from. She therefore becomes nondescript, and invisible. She is able to attend her husband's funeral without any of her friends, including her ex-husband, recognizing her. She is shooed away from high-end boutiques, which she used to patronize, and is even able to infiltrate her husband's law office as a cleaning woman.

Yet at the same time, while staying with the Davis family, she becomes glaringly visible, the only white woman within blocks of their humble apartment. Strieber sets up a delicious dichotomy here, wherein Kealy resents both her simultaneous status as a non-entity and a very visible target. She wants the safe, predictable life that she had only days before. Now, with only her wits, and an uneasy and grudging partnership with Lushawn's ex-convict uncle, Kealy slowly begins to use her invisibility against her pursuers, in a bid to regain her life and obtain justice --- and revenge --- on behalf of her murdered husband.

AN INVISIBLE WOMAN might have been a better book, but the ultimate villain and motive of the piece was somewhat vague and unformed. There were certainly enough issues and events left open at the end to form the basis for a sequel, but given what occurred here, I don't know that enough would be left open to sustain another suspense novel. Strieber, however, demonstrates great promise as a writer, and when she does hit the mark --- particularly in the second half --- her work is striking, assured, and compelling. I look forward to more, and better, from her in the future.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

I just finished reading this book and I'm still not quite sure whether it deserves a 3 or 4 star rating. I rushed through, turning pages because I wanted to see what happened. I liked the characters and I thought on a whole, the premise of the book was a great thrill ride.

Now, here is what I found wrong with it. I felt it ended too quickly without a good explanation of what and who was involved, and I just found the converstions, the situations, a little too "scripted". I know, it is a book, a novel, but do people really talk like these people talked? Maybe....who knows...it just felt forced in so many places.

Again, I am really on the fence but on the whole I liked the story, and I would pick up another book by this author.

Anne Strieber's Invisible Woman, well lets just say if you had anything else in the house to read you wouldn't even continue past the first few slow boring pages. If you do however the pace does pick up a little but the quality doesn't. Anne Strieber is apparently the husband of some other author you've never of named Whitley who she is apparently an uncredited collaborator on his successful international best sellers. Apparently he returned the favour with this one but I think more likely he is a bit whipped in the marriage and didn't have the courage to speak up and tell her when a bit of editing wouldn't have gone astray or that certain things happening are just a tad implausible. Anne Strieber seems to be one of those annoying people who instead of telling you something in a sentence likes to waffle on and on before getting to the point. At least that's what she does with her writing in this book and the conversations her characters have with each other. You'd think especially just after your husband has been murdered and you think that yourself and your kids are next that you'd maybe just get to the point but not so with main character Kealy Ryerson. She likes to pretty much use every word in the dictionary before finishing a sentence.

So why is this book called an Invisible Woman you ask? Is there some Griffin (HG Wells), Nick (Memoirs of an Invisible Man, H.F Saint) or Freddie Noon from (Smoke Donald E Westlake), type of action here? No there's not. The title refers to the ridiculously unbelievable notion that if a rich stuck up woman doesn't put on tons of makeup and expensive clothing then no one she has ever met before in her life including ex husband or best friends will recognise her at all. Are you getting the picture of why this book is pretty average yet? That plot may well fly for a low budget kids Disney film or something but for an adult novel, it just doesn't work. Plus the fact that for this story to pan out a huge number of convenient things need to be happening. The ending also leaves room for a sequel but no one that's picked this disaster up will be going anywhere near that. Yeah this is bad, give it a miss!

As a lot of us know, people can do anything in the face of adversity. This is something Kealy and her children discovered immediately following the death of their husband and father. Readers are taken inside the world of the rich and famous, and then are abruptly tossed on the other side of the tracks along with the main characters of this intriguing book. The people you think can trust, you can't. And the ones you think you can't trust, you should. Kealy learns how to follow her own instincts, as well as those of her children as they unite as a family determined to reclaim their lives. I especially enjoyed the surprise ending.

This book provides a thrilling ride across New York. I could not put it down! The author is new to me but I intend to read more of her work. What I enjoyed most was that the ending and plot were not predictable. Kealy Ryerson is not sure who she can trust after her husband calls and insists she run for her life and that she do it NOW! This middle-aged woman finds strengths she did not know she had.