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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,
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,
By
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.,
By
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.
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