The Reunion [Paperback]

Sue Walker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2005

In 1977, Innes Haldane was one of seven extremely dysfunctional teenagers incarcerated in the Unit, an avant-garde psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Edinburgh. There, she and her fellow inmates were forced into each other's lives, exposed to each other's pasts, and now share a collective memory.

Since then, they have spent their adult lives trying to forget the unspeakable acts that sent them there and the terrible secret that occurred behind its walls . . . until a message on Innes's answering machine with a voice from the past interrupts the quiet life she has tried so hard to make for herself. There is a murderer stalking the former inmates, and the only way for them to save themselves is by reuniting -- no matter what the emotional cost. If the killer doesn't shatter their new lives, the memories being brought back to light just might.

Now Innes must contact the others before someone else finds them first. . . .

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A shared, violent past haunts former patients of an Edinburgh adolescent psych unit in BBC reporter Walker's uneven debut thriller. In 2004, Innes Haldane, a graduate of the Unit, learns of the death of one of her former Unit friends, Isabella "Abby" Velasco. Flashing between the present and 1977, when the teens were institutionalized together, Walker shows her characters as deeply troubled kids and as variously disturbed adults plagued by guilty memories of a camping trip gone wrong. What happened back then? And does it spell death today? When Innes leaves her London job to look into Abby's alleged suicide, she learns that just before her death, Abby had started seeing Danny Rintoul, an accused rapist and former occupant of the Unit. Danny, she quickly learns, is another suspected suicide. Meanwhile, heartless stockbroker Alex Baxendale, another Unit grad, resists uncovering long-buried secrets, and Dr. Simon Caldwell, also a former Unit resident, is looking for clues to his daughter's kidnapping. Walker gives her characters so many secrets—and keeps hinting around at that old, big one—that it can be exhausting. She characterizes and summarizes hurriedly, rushing from one revelation to the next, and the psychology is often shallow (bad behavior is blamed on bad parents and bad therapy; redemption is found in confession and good therapy). But the ending offers many grisly surprises.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Seven teenagers institutionalized in "the Unit," representing a textbook range of emotional afflictions, are taken on an Outward Bound-style weekend. The disappearance of four members of the group during a night hike--followed by some seriously paranoid behavior upon their return--forms the crux of this psychological thriller where the burning question is not so much whodunit but "What'd they do?" Walker, a British journalist, veils a generic plotline with a jittery, third-person narrative that incorporates lengthy flashbacks, newspaper clippings, letters, and excerpts from therapists' logbooks. Most of the novel, though, is set in a period two decades after the fateful moonlit eve, when the former inpatients begin dropping like flies and the surviving characters' lives portentously converge. When the revelation finally arrives, it's so horrific that many readers, even those relatively inured to suspense-novel depravity, will be left incredulous. Nonetheless, like Donna Tartt in The Secret History (1992)--but think loony bin, not Ivory Tower--this first novelist peels back the layers with confidence and polish. Fans of head-shrinking spine tinglers will be putty in her hands. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: HarperTorch (September 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060726121
• ISBN-13: 978-0060726126
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,368,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An engrossing and ultimately disturbing novel, February 26, 2005

By 

Beth Cholette "doctor_beth" (Upstate NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reunion: A Novel (Hardcover)

The focus of this novel is a group of disturbed young teenagers, who, in the late 70s, shared some months together in a progressive adolescent psychiatric center known as "The Unit." There is Simon, an awkward young man tormented by a horrible mother; Danny, a surprisingly charming teenaged rapist; Carrie, a hardened beauty with a sexual abuse history; Alex, a highly disturbed, androgynous young woman with violent tendencies; Lydia, a grossy overweight teen with a history of arson; Isabella, seemingly normal but with a completely dysfunctional family; and finally, Innes, the newest patient admitted to the dynamic. Twenty-seven years later, an out-of-the-blue phone message from Isabella to Innes sets off a chain reaction to uncover horrifying untold details about the shared past of this ecclectic group.

First time author Sue Walker has created an engrossing mystery surrounding The Unit, allluding to a horror at which the reader can only begin to guess. However, her frequent shifts in both narrative voice and time--e.g., switching between the 1970s and present-day--are somewhat choppy and a bit disorienting at times. In addition, it is not clear why she chose to concentrate on certain characters while others, like Carrie (a major player in The Unit's disasterous events), fade quickly into the background. Finally, as other reviwers have mentioned, Walker fails to provide sufficient insight into the psychiatic disturbances of her young characters to fully explain both their conduct as both children and adults. Still, this is an original, interesting story that is worth reading.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A page turner, December 2, 2004

By 

J. McNeill (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reunion: A Novel (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel, it was a real page turner (had a few unintentionally long lunches at work as I was too engrossed to stop reading).It is a dark tale v. well told. I think this is a great debut novel and look forward to the next.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A touch of evil., October 9, 2004

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Reunion: A Novel (Hardcover)

"The Reunion," a thriller by Sue Walker, focuses on a group of adolescents who are sent to "The Unit," a progressive psychiatric hospital outside of Edinburgh. The inmates are given a great deal of freedom, considering that their mental problems are quite severe. The goal of this facility is to reach these troubled teens and send them out into the world as potentially productive individuals. Twenty-six years pass, and one by one, members of the Unit are dying, apparently by suicide, accident, or murder. What is the connection between these seemingly unrelated deaths?

Sue Walker has written an impressive debut novel that is an exciting and engrossing page-turner. The author vividly portrays the troubled teens on the Unit, including Danny, a rapist at fourteen, Carrie, a drug-addict who was abused at home, Innes, a shoplifting truant who acts out to punish her overbearing mother, and Alex, a foul-mouthed and aggressive bully. The scenes in the mental hospital are stark and brutal. Walker captures the despair and anger that cause these young people to act destructively.

These flashback scenes are much more effective than the scenes that take place in the present. Walker dizzyingly moves from one character to another, showing us what has happened to them in the last two and a half decades. In some cases, the disturbed teens grow up to become well-paid professionals, but, even as adults, they still have nightmares that never die.

The weakest part of the book is the over-the-top ending, in which Walker crams too many melodramatic, unbelievable and violent events into a few pages. The author reveals a "secret" that most attentive readers will have figured out for themselves long before. Still, Walker gets high marks for her powerful and disturbing scenes in the Unit, and I look forward to more work from this talented writer.