Review by Booklist Review
Rosie Monroe is an art student in New York in the 1980s, pursuing her dreams away from her small Massachusetts hometown. Bennett, an older man, sweeps her off her feet with his charm and cultured mannerisms. His affluent lifestyle dazzles Rosie, who feels awed that such a wealthy man is showing interest in her, and she quickly learns to adjust to his dominant old-world manners. However, as she falls in love and has a child with him, she soon sees past the facades that hide his nefarious cons. In the middle of the night, he takes her and their child from their glamorous estate to a rundown cabin in northern Vermont, abandoning her for long periods of time and forcing Rosie to fend for herself in the forest while raising their daughter on her own. When she finally takes matters into her own hands to break free from him, the consequences she faces become long-lasting. This thought-provoking literary thriller from Finn (The Underneath, 2018) brilliantly depicts the effects of patriarchy on women and their sense of duty to please men. This resilient heroine embodies the evolution of feminism in a male-dominant society, making this a poignant story for our time.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Finn's propulsive latest (after The Underneath) tackles power dynamics shaped by gender, age, and class via the harrowing story of an art school dropout who is seduced by a man who turns out to be a thieving con artist. It's 1983 when Rosie Monroe, a freshman at Parsons School of Design from a blue-collar part of Massachusetts, meets fine art appraiser Bennett, who is 20 years her senior. Seduced by his connections to high society, she abandons Parsons to live with him at an estate on Connecticut's Gold Coast, where Bennett has ingratiated himself with the owners, who come and go. Two years later, Bennett suddenly takes Rosie and their newborn daughter, Miranda, to an uninsulated cabin in northern Vermont, where sordid characters emerge from Bennett's orbit who fence his stolen goods. Halfway through, the story jumps ahead 30 years to follow a middle-aged Rosie as traumatic memories of her abuse as a child rise to the surface, before Finn plunges into a muddled third act involving a grown-up Miranda's search for answers about Bennett. Though there are too many narrative threads at play, Finn underscores the impact abuse has on Rosie's psyche, while charting a course for the character's resilience. This lurid tale will keep readers turning the pages. Agent: Kate Shaw, the Shaw Agency. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In this latest from Finn, whose The Gloaming was a finalist for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize, Rosie has seemingly escaped her abusive childhood when she meets Bennett. To the lonely, inexperienced Rosie, the older Bennett appears to be a treasure trove of knowledge, money, class, and protection, yet there is something off about him. They spend the summer in a borrowed beach house on Connecticut's Gold Coast, where Rosie is essentially trapped without transportation or money. When they leave abruptly in the middle of the night to relocate to an unheated house in rural Vermont, Rosie begins to understand that something is not right. Left alone with baby Miranda for weeks at a time, Rosie learns from their neighbor Billie how to shoot a gun, find food in the woods, secure handouts in the nearest town, and avoid scrutiny by authorities. She also learns she can survive on her own, and Bennett is in for a surprise when he finally returns. VERDICT Finn offers a chilling account of the ways women can be abused, with sexual assault, psychological trauma, objectification, and murder crossing class boundaries. Yet as she also shows, women often cannot escape the cages they have helped to build around their lives. A #MeToo tale that will also appeal to general readers.--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
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