Take Me, Take Me with You: A Novel of Suspense [Hardcover]

Lauren Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2004

Lauren Kelly, with amazing power and authority, explores the secret kinship of "soul mates," in a mysterious and demonic love story.

Lara Quade, a disaffected intellectual associated with a prominent Princeton research center, is a young woman whose physical beauty has been scarred in a childhood accident. She is jarred out of the routine of her life by a seemingly chance meeting with a young man named Zedrick Dewe, whom she seems to know somehow as he in turn seems to know her. What is the connection between them? Who has brought them together? And why are they drawn so powerfully to one another? Their encounter leads to a highly charged erotic experience that takes an abrupt turn from tender to violent, predictable to terrifying. And from this initial episode springs a sequence of inexplicable events and revelations so shocking that they lead Lara, long in denial about her life, to uncover the truth about the buried hurt and rage in the tortured past of her family.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Five-year-old Lorraine Quade loves her momma, but crazy Hedy Quade returns this love in mighty peculiar ways: "Squeezing her hands around my throat so that my eyes opened wide and there were splotches of black like sequins and I started to panic and kick and Momma relaxed her grip, it was O.K. Momma was only just playing, like Momma did sometimes." The emphasis falls squarely on the psychological in this unusual novel of psychological suspense, as pretty soon momma loads Lorraine and older brother Ryan into their 1968 Chevy sedan and drives into an oncoming freight train. Twenty-two years later, Lorraine is alive though badly scarred both mentally and physically; she's changed her name to Lara and is working as a research fellow at the Institute for Semiotics, Aesthetics and Cultural Research at Princeton. After receiving an anonymous gift of an expensive ticket to a concert, she finds herself seated next to an unlikely classical music fan: "The intruder was a youngish ox of a man with unshaven, stubbled jaws and punk-style hair." His name is Zedrick Dewe, and Lara, who's inexplicably drawn to him, later lets him come up to her apartment, with disastrous consequences. Lara's life, never a model of stability, begins to unravel even further as she seeks answers to mysteries involving murder, incest, insanity and obsession. Kelly couples stylish (and sometimes affected) prose with an unusual plot structure, casting back and forth from past to present to build suspense and gradually reveal secrets. This is not your mother's whodunit, but readers with a taste for the unusual will find it chilling and compelling.
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About the Author

Lauren Kelly is the pseudonym of a bestselling and award-winning author.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; 1 edition (April 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060565519
• ISBN-13: 978-0060565510
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,153,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Joyce Carol Oates does it again?, July 26, 2004

By 

JCO Fan "Marty" (Pa. U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Me, Take Me with You: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

I picked this book from the shelf at my local library by reading the inside of the jacket. Never having heard of Lauren Kelly, I was pleasently surprised (after a few pages)to realize that the author could be none other than one of my favorites... Joyce Carol Oates. I was thrilled to read another short novel by the amazing JCO. I have read all of her Rosamond Smith stories and find it truely intriguing that she has yet another alias. I only hope this means more creativity to come. Take me has a familiar JCO and Rosamond Smith theme, that of the duality of personalities.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterful Psychological Thriller, April 28, 2004

By 

Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Take Me, Take Me with You: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

Lara Quade is a Princeton research assistant who one day receives an anonymous invitation to a concert. From here she sets out to rediscover the truth about her family and past that she had previously tried to abandon. A strange accident in Lara's youth rests at the center of the novel. The story alternates between past and present, piecing the violent circumstances of Lara's upbringing together while also relating the impulsive and dangerous journey she embarks upon after her mentor and superior is attacked. The self-destructive impulse that reduced her mother to a near invalid threatens to overcome Lara as well.

Lara has a deeply introverted personality that makes her virtually friendless and yearning for the approval of people she deems superior. One of the central conflicts she has in re-examining her past is her sense of class difference. She views the lower class community from which she came with a certain contempt, but she also abhors the cultured people of money she encounters so frequently in the affluent community of Princeton. The pretension of her scholastic endeavors even leads her to walk away from a discussion laughing in the academics faces. She went there determined to redefine herself (even giving herself a new name) but finds that she is trapped in a doll like image of the neglected girl who lost her family.

Like the character of Ghislaine from Angela Carter's first novel Shadow Dance, Lara is similarly scarred and drawn toward degradation for the sake of love she never fully receives. She is fiercely intelligent and bravely faces her past unlike her brother Ryan who has determined to only embrace the future. In a haunting way, the past is shown to mirror the present. For instance, the description of a dribble of spit Lara sees on her mother's face is repeated in how she sees herself when waking after passing out on a strange bed. Clues relating to the truth of what happened in Lara's childhood are scattered throughout the novel so that series of events hit the reader like premonitions turning it into a tense psychological adventure. It is also a deeply moving novel about a family that is broken apart through violence and jealousy. The sense of desperate isolation it conveys is chilling.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, thrilling and ultimately unsettling., September 25, 2004

By 

Amy (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Me, Take Me with You: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

The pace at the start of the story gave me a rush of adrenline.
It was superbly crafted, moving in time and presenting the future before the present. The characters were seedy, and the decisions and choices of the protagonist made it hard to root for her. But at the end I accepted her choice along with her.

I am not a follower of mainstream thrillers, nor have I ever read Joyce C. Oates. But after this novel, I intend to start.