Sunstroke (Jesse Kellerman, 2006)
I had heard about Jesse Kellerman's debut a while back, but only picked this up when I was at the newsstand and wanted something to read over lunch yesterday. Everything--from the blurbs I've read to the cover art--advertises Sunstroke as a mystery/thriller. Dress this up in trade paper instead of mass market and change the cover art, and I bet reviewers would start discussing its merits as a literary novel instead of in terms of the mystery.
It took me a while to warm up to Gloria because I hated her passivity. I was also annoyed that the author began the book with a serving of the standard cliches about single women filling their lives with cats and other "evidence of their solitude." It was the missing Carl who interested me. I wanted to know what happened to him and as his story slowly unfolded, I was hooked. Kellerman's descriptive passages are beautifully written, but subtly so and I think that's what drew me in. The first chapter of his next book was included here as a teaser, and it hooked me.
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