Speak Now [Hardcover]

Kaylie Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

"Although we've gotten used to second-generation actors equaling or surpassing the accomplishments of their parents, the same hasn't happened with 2nd-generation novelists. Nonetheless there are a few . . . and added to their small number ought to be Kaylie Jones."—New York Times

Clara Sverdlow has been stalked by Niko Kamenski, her high school lover, for almost twenty years. A recently sober alcoholic in her mid-thirties, she has found happiness in a tenuous marriage to Mark, another recovering alcoholic. Yet the past lurks over them like a great shadow.

Clara’s father, Viktor, was a Russian political prisoner in Auschwitz. The guilt and horror he still carries with him are part of his daughter’s natural composition. Mark has his own demons—a brother dead from a drug overdose and connections to his hometown heavies, which he can’t seem to break free of.

Kaylie Jones is the author of four novels, including A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries and Celeste Ascending. She teaches in Long Island University's MFA Program in Writing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pretty much everyone in Jones's affecting but overwrought novel has a dark past and a resultant chemical dependency. There's Clara, a counselor at a battered women's shelter, who used booze and pills; her husband, Mark, who drank and snorted cocaine to forget his father's physical abuse and his twin brother's suicide; and Clara's stalker, Niko, who also had an abusive father and is obsessed with his high school romance with Clara even after 20 successful years as a crystal meth kingpin. And there's Clara's alcoholic father, Viktor, and her Aunt Anya, Holocaust survivors who have burdened Clara with their own nightmares. As Clara and Mark struggle to stay sober for their infant daughter, they are undermined by Niko's sinister machinations and bolstered by support group members and AA sponsors who hover like guardian angels. Jones writes poignantly of the ways in which families maim and mend themselves. But the juxtaposition of problems of addiction, male controlling behavior and the cycle of abuse with the horrors of Auschwitz almost seems to suggest that they're in the same moral neighborhood-that recovery-movement nostrums about the importance of dredging up the past in order to let go of it and move on should apply to all with equal ease. Jones crafts a gripping story, but the novel's mishmash of genres-therapeutic melodrama, psychological thriller, 12-step pamphlet, Holocaust memoir, a dash of Jackie Collins-style bitchery-never fully coheres.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Kaylie Jones, one of America's finest young novelists, has written a tale that exhibits all her considerable strengths -- a dark and powerful story, a compelling hero, and language clear and deep as a New England pond. Speak Now is a rich and splendid book." -- Roger Rosenblatt -- Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Akashic Books (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 188845153X
• ISBN-13: 978-1888451535
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,091,538 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've published five novels, including A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES, CELESTE ASCENDING, and SPEAK NOW. My newest book is LIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME, my first memoir. I am the only daughter of the novelist James Jones, who wrote the WWII trilogy FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, THE THIN RED LINE, and WHISTLE.

A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES was made into a Merchant-Ivory film starring Kris Kristofferson, Leelee Sobieski, Jesse Bradford, Barbara Hershey, and Isaac de Bankole.

I chair the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, which awards $10,000 annually to an unpublished first novel. During the past 15 years, 12 of the winners have been published to impressive critical acclaim.

I teach creative writing in the MFA Writing and Literature program at Stony Brook Southampton and at the Wilkes University MFA program in professional writing.

I live in New York with my husband, daughter, and two mixed-breed mutts, Layla and Natalie.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Both a good read and a truly satisfying book, November 17, 2003

By 

B. T. Conway "BTC" (East Hampton, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Speak Now (Hardcover)

Not only does is this one suspenseful novel--almost unbearably so--but it's also a meditation on the far reaching effects of unspeakable horror. It's also about love, loyalty, strength, and survival. Jones excels at portraying the ennobling struggle of people building better lives for themselves and their families. One masterful stroke is how she creates a villain who is truly frightening, and yet will ineluctably evoke the reader's sympathy. This is a book you can return to again and again.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Marriage of Popular Suspence and Mastery of Craft, November 13, 2003

By 

S. Thorgersen "chronicdichotomy" (Denver, Colorado) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Speak Now (Hardcover)

In a time when literature seems divided into two classes-the literary and the popular (or, more appropriately, the literary versus the popular), it is refreshing to read books like Ms. Jones' new novel, SPEAK NOW, as they mark, perhaps, the next evolutionary step in literature-a union between the gripping, suspenseful story that is so popular today, and the timeless importance of writing that brings a reader back not only to recapture a few good thrills, but also because he or she wants to admire, for a second or third time, how authors like Kaylie Jones are able to craft a story and it characters.

SPEAK NOW is, among other things, the story of addiction-addiction to drugs and alcohol, certainly, but more importantly, our strange addiction to suffering, whether it be through reliving past sins, or enduring the touch of a dangerous and manipulative lover. It is a story of abuse of others, and of the abuse we inflict upon ourselves through guilt and the fear that we do not deserve the blessings that we have. This idea is offered masterfully, through the kind of temporal weaving that only an experienced and talented author can conceptualize and execute. Here, in SPEAK NOW, Jones seamlessly takes us through three distinct time periods-the present, in which Clara Sverdlow struggles to rise above her addictions and find the courage to hold on to those she loves; Clara's youth, wherein she meets the man who will haunt her for years to come; and finally, the distant past, in which we learn of her father's role in the concentration camps during World War II, of his eventual escape from those nightmares, and finally of the effect that his experiences have had on Clara.

As a result of her thorough research, the author is able to create scenes and characters that shine not only because of the writing or the action, but also because of myriad interesting facts, placed as purposefully and artistically as ornaments on a Christmas tree. We learn of little details-the clear plastic bags that people in shelters must use, so that the shelter can see the contents within-and appreciate such details not only because they are new and interesting to us, but also because, in many instances, such details support the invasion of privacy motif that runs throughout the novel.

Her characters are equally well researched, the greatest example being, perhaps, Niko Kamemski. Here, Jones has created a sort of distorted Jay Gatsby, a man who is convinced that he has found his love at a tender age, that, by destiny, she belongs to him, and finally, that he must use any means of building up wealth and power to secure her for himself. He is an obsessed and driven man, and he-as well as the women who have suffered abuse from other men in the novel-is crafted honestly, and much to the author's credit, without judgment from the writer herself. Also concerning Niko, it is interesting to point out that his occupation and his own addictions make him not only a physical threat to Clara and her new family, but also a source of temptation-a temptation to return to the old habits that slowly kill us, offering us a dark place that is, at least, familiar.

SPEAK NOW is a fast-paced read filled with details that are fascinating, but that stay in the shadow of the story, where they belong. It is a story driven by characters with whom we sympathize and admire as they struggle to attain one of the simplest, but most difficult of virtues: the ability to accept the past-to look back, but not stare.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Edge of seat suspense with believable characters, October 18, 2003

By 

R. Decker "bobdecker" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Speak Now (Hardcover)

Jones does such a good job in building up suspense that I was tempted half way through to skip to the last chapter and find out what happened. But what's most striking about this book is the way the author is able to use dispassionate, matter-of-fact language with respect to the particulars of her main characters' drug and booze problems while maintaining an emotional intensity that doesn't let up until the story is over. The result is to make things we've become used to shocking again. Unlike so many books, there are no underdeveloped characters here. In fact, both major and minor characters are unusually original and compelling; Jones has done her homework without turning in a labored performance. The Manhattan backdrop is skillfully drawn, and makes this one of the best "New York" novels in a long time as well.