Customer Reviews

RED LEAVES

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I love most of Cook's books, and his ability to weave two stories in one book, simultaneously, is impressive. His stories are always page-turners, however, Red Leaves is like a diet version of Cook. Less calories but also less flavor.

There are several flaws:
1. Neither the parents nor the babysitter looked in on the little girl.
2. If Keith was such a sulky, suspicious boy, WHY did the parents ever trust him to babysit?
3. The real kidnapper leaves cigarette butts outside the victim's window and that doesn't immediately solve the case?

I finished the book in 2 sittings. It was interesting, hence the 3 stars, but this story was just too implausible. It is not Cook at his best. The characters are simply dull. You can't sympathize with the accused. You can't even feel bad about all the unecessary injustices because the story is just not as convincing as the drama it unfolds could be.

From Red Leaves:

"Here is the illusion--a normal day predicts a normal tomorrow and each day is not a brand-new spin of the wheel, our lives not lived at the whim of Lady Luck."

Yes, how often to we pass accidents, observe incidents that just missed us, could have involved us, but did not.

"Suspicion is an acid, that's one thing I know. Everything it touches it corrodes. It eats through the smooth, glistening surface of things and the mark it leaves is indelible. Late one night I watch a rerun of the movie Alien."

"In one scene, the alien bleeds a liquid so corrosive it immediately eats through first one floor of the space ship, then another and another. And I thought, it's like that, suspicion, it has nowhere to go but down through level after level of old trusts and long devotions. Its direction of always toward the bottom."

What a beautiful job the author does of building suspicion. When I first started reading it, I thought I knew where the author was headed. This, despite the superb blurbs for this particular book from Harlan Coben, Peter Straub, Susan Issacs, and Joyce Carol Oates.

So, I says to myself, the book cannot possibly be headed where it looks like it is headed. This is a master of misdirection. So, to experiment, about a quarter of the way through, I wrote down where it naturally looked like it was going, along with where a savvy reader might second-guess it to be going. Then, about three-quarters of the way through, I wrote down where I thought it was going then.

I was wrong all the way around, and delighted to be wrong. I did not know until the end exactly what would come at the end.

Harlan Coben called RED LEAVES "one of the best books you will read this year--gripping, beautifully written, haunting, surprising, and devastating. Thomas H. Cook has long been one of my favorite writers. RED LEAVES will show you why."

Peter Straub says, "Thomas Cook writes like a wounded angel, and RED LEAVES is one of his masterworks. Sorrow, suspicion, fear, and forgiveness hang suspended over an almost unbearably increasing tension."

Interesting is Cook's choice of epigraph, which is from Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn's "Visiting The Master."

In Dunn's poem, the would-be writer goes to the master again and again to learn the secrets of writing a good book. The master tells him again and again that there are no secrets but that "A good woman is hard to keep. Oh, return to zero, the master said. Use what's lying around the house. Make it simple and sad."

The author not only made it simple and sad, he made it wise and haunting and brilliant.

The entire atmosphere of Red Leaves by Thomas Cook is depressing. While Eric and Meredith's teen-aged son, Keith, is babysitting for a little girl, the little girl disappears. Suspicion immediately falls upon Keith and in what is probably the saddest part of the book, rather than receiving the love and support of his parents, he has to face their suspicion as well as that of everyone else. Oh sure, they do the right things-- they bring in a lawyer, they mouth the right words to the police, but they don't REALLY believe that their son is not guilty of what he is accused.

Under the pressure of the investigation, the family slowly deteriorates as Eric stops trusting Meredith and vice versa. Eric and Meredith are not particularly likeable people, and I can't say for sure whether Keith is likeable or not since Cook portrays him so intently as a sullen teen-aged boy.

There are several surprise twists at the end of the book, as well as a few holes in the plot-- who WAS driving the car that brought Keith home the night of the babysitting, and how was the little girl spirited out of the house without anybody's knowledge? However, it was a book that was impossible to put down.

"Family photos always lie," is the first line of "Red Leaves," Thomas Cook's stunning new novel about a family under pressure. The eloquent narrator, Eric Moore, owns a camera and photo shop and photography is a motif that permeates the novel. Snapshots capture people at particular moments in their lives, but it is impossible to look at pictures and really know what lies behind the posed smiles.

"Red Leaves" is the story not just of Eric Moore, but of his dead mother and bitter father, his shiftless brother, Warren, his wife, Meredith, and his son, Keith. By the end of the novel, Eric has ample reason to reevaluate everything that he has assumed about each one of these individuals. He achieves "the high wisdom that only the fallen know" the hard way, through bitter experience.

Eric, Meredith, and fifteen-year-old Keith live in a beautiful home in a small town, and life is good. Meredith has a job she adores, teaching English and handling administrative duties in a local junior college. One Friday evening, Keith is asked to baby-sit for eight-year-old Amy Giordano. He agrees and everyone's lives change. The next morning, Amy is not in her bed, and her parents are crazy with worry. Who abducted their little girl? Is she still alive? Since Keith was apparently the last person to see her, suspicion naturally falls on him. The police are particularly interested in the fact that Keith is a reserved and awkward boy with few friends and low self-esteem.

Throughout the book, Cook maintains a high level of suspense, using foreshadowing and opening each section of the book with cryptic comments by the narrator made after the events of this novel have already taken place. Therefore, "Red Leaves" is in the nature of a jigsaw puzzle, whose pieces can be put together only after the last page is turned.

The story derives its power from Cook's marvelously descriptive writing and his careful delineation of character. The book's themes are universal: no one is exactly as he or she appears on the surface, suspicion can be corrosive, and happiness is a fragile state that too often dissipates without warning. Cook also demonstrates that, for better or worse, each of us is a product of our particular family history.

Although Eric's life seems stable, an unpredictable combination of circumstances turns everything he values to ashes. "Red Leaves" suffers from a melodramatic ending that I wish had been a bit more restrained, but it is still a compelling and unforgettable work about a family's tragic disintegration.

In the tradition of Harlan Coben and Nelson DeMille, Thomas H.Cook presents readers with not only mysteries and suspense books but taught psychological dramas. Among the books I've read by him which I really enjoyed are the titles, The Chatham School Murder, Places in the Dark and perhaps my favorite, Breakheart Hill. And his newest book Red Leaves is a welcome addition to a writer who provokes gradual increases of fear which finds readers holding their breaths and gulping down the pages.

Red Leaves begins on an ordinary day in an ordinary home in a suburb which could be found across America. But in less than 48 hours this will be no ordinary home with ordinary people, And once again we as readers find ourselves wondering how well do we really know people, even those closest to us.

On the surface life seems good for Eric Moore and his family. He is happy with his photo and framing shop and his wife has
a good teaching job at the local community college. They live in a closely knit community where they have friends and good neighbors. And if their 15 year old son seems a bit odd, isn't that just teenage angst, Eric thinks? But undeneath it all Eric's life so good or so simple as wrestles with thoughts about his other family as he calls them. His mother who died in a car crash, a young sister who died, his ne'er do well and iullusionary father now in a nursing home and his brother, an alcoholic and solitary man. And then one night Eric's son goes to baby-sit for aneighbors 8 year old daughter and life for the Moores nothing will never be the same again.

This book which begins slowly gains steam as the events and Eric's thoughts and findings begin a downward spiral for which there is only doom for his family. And if the ending was melodramatic and almost anti-climactic, it did seem like the only plausible and possible ending. The characters were well defined and I as the reader felt compassion for all of them but most of all Eric who began to realize that things were never the way they seemed.

I have long found Thomas H. Cook to be a wonderful writer of this genre. And my recent reading of Red Leaves only served to confirm my previous thoughts as well. Allonge with presenting us with believable characters living ordinary lives that are about to change dramatically, Cook has the knack of making his readers feel as if they are part of the scenery. As always when I finish one of his books, I look forward to reading his newest one or an older title I haven't read yet. Keep writing them Mr. Cook and this is one reader who will continue to gulp down your titles.

Like others who didn't find this read a spectacular one, I am surprised at how many 5 stars this book has received. Cook's a good writer & this was an interesting enough story but I found nothing much to LOVE about it. My problems w/ this book are:

1. none of the characters, even the young son, were very likable so I didn't care about any of their fates.
2. a HUGE PROBLEM mentioned several other times here is that it is not at all believable that the girls parents didn't check on their young daughter when they got home & relieved the babysitter. Keith, the babysitter, hadn't checked on her himself since 8:30 PM & the parents got back at 10PM. So we're supposed to believe that no one looked in on her from 8:30 pm until the next morning.
3. It's not believabe that cops wouldn't have looked more into pizza delivery guy.
4. My kids are not teens yet but I find it hard to believe that a dad would allow his son to completely lock him out of his bedroom especially after the son has been accused of possible kidnapping/murder/rape. Keith wouldn't allow dad in his room & only opened the door 2 inches when they spoke to each other through the door. Dad didn't even force his way in when he thought his kid may have been smoking pot in there. Yes, he goes in twds the end of the story but so much has gone on by then that it makes no sense. I'm supposed to believe that the parents wouldn't have searched this mystery room while the kid was at school one day?
5. Unanswered question about how Keith actually got home that night. I only saw one other poster complain about this issue. I re-read last few chapters to see if I missed something & I'm still confused. Are we supposed to assume that Keith's girlfriend dropped him off? It's never addressed. The fact that the little girl could not have been abducted by a person w/out a car is stressed & the mysterious car seen on the driveway when Keith came home is also mentioned again & again but when story finally resolves, the "car" issue is never addressed again. Yes, I know that pizza delivery guy had s car but that doesn't help me with the car that Keith may or may not have gottn out of on the driveway that night.
6. While we're on the subject of Keith's "girlfriend", are we supposed to think that she was actually a prostitute that worked at the water tower & he was using the $ that he stole to pay her for her services. This kid is supposed to be a loner & has no friends (male & female) & then we hear he has had some girlfriend across town. That storyline never comes up again & it's a big deal. Also, it's unbelievable that Keith's dad didn't press him for more info about this bombshell. His son opens up to him once in he whole book & the dad doesn't ask him for a few more details?
7. Also, if Keith was such a loner, why didn't his parent's find it unusual that he said he was going out into town after his babysitting gig was over that night? With whom? What normal kid just roams around, alone at 11 pm at night? Obviously, he's up to something or he has a friend that he doesn't want them to know about. Keith told cops that he walked around & sat alone on a set of bleachers in the park at 11 PM! That's creepy & any parent would be concerned about that behavior. It's never address by parents or cops!

Unbelievable moments & flat/unlikable characters.Not a good read.

Tragedy befalls Eric Moore's small town life when eight year old Amy Giordano disappears from her home. Suspicion immediately centers on Eric's adolescent son Keith, who was Amy's baby-sitter on that fateful night and the last person to see young Amy before she disappeared - we think.

This is the first of many problems with this book. Not only does no one know when Amy was last seen - no one even has the sense to ask. Amy's parents return from their night out on the town, Eric the baby-sitter leaves and the following morning Amy is gone with no one having checked on her until she doesn't show up at the breakfast table.

After this credibility gap I had immense trouble buying much else in this book which I believe is an attempt to portray how everyday life for an everyday family in an everyday town can be turned up-side down when once in a lifetime circumstances shatter their idyllic existence.

Eric passively watches the town prey upon his son - and even he suspects poor Keith of the worst. His loving wife is a shrew with little or no maternal instincts and even the less than satisfying ending left me wondering why I bothered finishing this book. At best Red Leaves would make a mediocre short story - as a 300 page novel it fails completely

...but certainly not one I'd recommend. Just trudged along with not much to offer. Didn't find too many sympathetic characters, and the end was predictable. The only redeeming factor was that it wasn't a long book. Wish I would've enjoyed it, but simply finished it to satisfy my book club requirement!

The twist at the end is nice, the sort of thing that would work well for a short story. But aside from that there wasn't much that makes this work at all remarkable. The characters weren't believable or full developed. Nor did they do many things that most of us would think to do in a situation like theirs. It's a readable enough book but not one that lingers or has any emotional impact, and given the subject, you'd think it would.

Thomas H. Cook is always so interesting. I've never been disappointed in any book of his. This one is no exception, and I was thrilled by it. In a way, it reminded me of "We Need To Talk About Kevin." The voice in that book belonged to the teenage boy's mother - ironic and precise as the father's in this one. Each of these novels is crisp, succinct, and pounds, like a beating heart, to the finish. There were some implausible things about "Leaves." But the writing was so honest, I could easily overlook them. Reviewers here have mentioned the fact that the family never looked in on their sleeping daughter. I was surprised that they waited until the next morning to call the police and Keith's parents, which originally made me suspect the girl's own parents. A few other minor glitches made me wonder, but still - a book is a success for me when A. I can't put it down and I'm happy not to (sometimes I can't put a book down and I hate myself - it's so poorly written); B. The writing is passionate and outstanding. Bravo, Mr. Cook!