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4.0 out of 5 stars
Beauitufl Innocence, May 1 2009
What would you do if you had to protect your child? How would you protect your child? To what lengths would you go? At what time does protection cross a line over into vengeance? Can a mother's love go too far?
Leslie Stone has a specialty. She finds missing children. Haunted by the deaths of several young girls (named The Nightingales by the press) when she was thirteen, Leslie now vows to find others that have gone missing, others that have been taken from their homes or abducted. But missing children is a harsh business. Leslie knows this better than most. She knows that people can disappear in an instant.
Formerly a police officer, Leslie is now a private investigator suffering from the after effects of a nervous breakdown and a discharge due to reasons of insanity from the force. Killing a man who Leslie believed guilty of murdering children, should of made her feel better, but it didn't. The voices are still there and the veil between reality and fantasy is slowly fading away.
Then something happens. Leslie's daughter Molly comes to her. She wants to hire her mother to find Lydia, a local girl who has disappeared from Molly's school. Five boys have been charged with beating and raping Lydia and they are to stand trial. Molly knows that the boys are not the real culprits and urges her mother to find out who is. Leslie shocked at how similar the crime is to that of the Nightingales. This brings about something inside Leslie. She starts revisiting the past in order to find the answers to questions in the present. She knows that time is running out.
If Leslie doesn't hurry, doesn't figure out who really murdered Lydia, than another person may die and five innocents will go to prison. She is in a race against time and it looks like time may be winning...
Karen Novak has written a gem of a novel. It is perhaps one of the best psychological thrillers that I have read all year. It is clear, crisp, sharp and wonderfully written. I was enthralled through out this book and finished it in two days.
Novak is deft with a pen. She uses a writing technique that I found worked really well in "Innocence." The novel uses a roving narrative. Several characters get their turn to speak as the point of view shifts. We are able to see things from Leslie's point of view, one of the accused boys and her daughter Molly. Normally, I'm not too fond a roving narrative, as it can get away from the story and make things confusing. In this case, the technique worked beautifully. It really hit home how the investigation concerned everyone, not just super sleuth, Leslie Stone.
I also loved Novak's characters. Leslie was flawed, but obviously strong. She was also vulnerable and was aware of this, using it to her own advantage. She is a great change from the damsel in distress, or the wise, tough talking heroine of other suspense novels. Leslie knows her weaknesses and her strengths and is an amazing woman. By the end, I felt as if I knew her. All the characters are strong in this book. By the end of it, I was rooting for the good guys out loud; you always know the book is good if you start to talk to it.
This is an incredible novel and an amazing read. Novak has captured the soul of a mother and put it on paper so that we may all revel in its beauty and identify with its emotions. Anyone who has loved a child can identify with "Innocence". Read it. Even if it does keep you up at night, you won't be sorry.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
multiple realities, Feb 26 2004
I started this book on a Monday night and was busy teaching/preparing lesson plans all of Tuesday and Wednesday. My reward for my hard work was to finish reading "Innocence."
I finished the book Thursday morning with my coffee! At first the alternate realities and conflicts of both the adolescent girls and the main character (Leslie) kept me in suspense so that I could find all their problems resolved in the end. But the books deserves much more respect than that - as I soon realized. It is well-crafted, complex, and in very touch with reality as we know it. Doing the right thing is never more complex than when you are an adolescent with divided loyalties as both Leslie and her daughter illustrate. Leslie tells her father's (long overdue) story in the end, just as her daughter, Molly, reveals her own (and Lydias's) big "secrets". Or does she? Molly's story is forever evolving and we get the sense that even she doesn't know what is real or not. The complex layers of denial that Lydia's mother displays (toward her daughter's abuse by her step father) are very real. Reality is not black and white. This is also what Leslie struggles with - her fear that she is crazy - rather than accept that she "sees" things that other people do not. It is not whether she is crazy, it is whether she accepts what she sees ("nightingales"), interprets it as needed, and moves on.
I want the characters to live on in another book. Leslie returns to the police force and returns home to her husband and kids (with difficulties, of course). We find the Nightingale murders "solved" just as Leslie becomes involved in solving yet another crime in the town of Swifton Woods. (ah, but maybe the Nightingale crimes are not solved after all) A girl can dream about a sequel....
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous, Feb 25 2004
Ever since reading Lionel Shiver's We Need to Talk About Kevin last year, I have been trying to replicate that experience. Karen Novak's Innocence comes the closest yet. Shriver's book (an incredible effort) tells the story of the mother of a Columbine-type school murderer. The intensely troubled relationship between mother and son is at the heart of the book. At the hear of Novak's book is another relationship, this time father and daughter. The relationship is just as intense and troubling as in Shriver's book, but in a slightly different way. It is a long time before we find out how Leslie really feels about her father, that conflict and uncertainty, and the shifting reality as presented in the book, bring together a tragic, but beautiful story of innocence lost.
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