Review by Booklist Review
Vivian Parry, a junior theater critic, hopes to grow her career by writing scathing reviews of shows she sees on the stage she loves. A painful past has left her with some secrets of her own, including a reliance on pills and alcohol, and she is prone to fainting, all of which leaves the reader wondering how much of Vivian's voice is reliable. When a local graduate student named David Adler asks to interview her, Vivian agrees, unaware that meeting him will ensnare her in a web almost impossible to escape. After the interview, David mysteriously disappears, causing Vivian to question what role she plays in his story. Debut author Soloski, an award-winning theater critic who truly understands all elements of storytelling and drama, has penned a well-paced and artfully done novel. Although certain plot elements may seem a little too outlandish for some readers, the setting in the theater world by an author who is an insider there will undoubtedly be a draw for those who also enjoy the craft of acting and drama.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
An acid-tongued New York City theater critic investigates a stranger's disappearance in Soloski's uneven debut. Vivian Parry quit acting after her mother's death triggered a downward spiral that led to a drug overdose. Now a junior theater critic at a Manhattan magazine, Vivian mimics the functions of a healthy person by day so she can lose herself in a new play every night. When graduate student David Adler asks to interview Vivian for his thesis in exchange for a spot on a panel he's organizing at a prestigious conference, she agrees; the exposure could land her a promotion. She ends the interview abruptly, however, after David's questions take a pointed and personal turn. Weeks later, David's fiancée calls, claiming Vivian was the last person to see him before he vanished. A little digging reveals that David's promised panel never existed. Vivian embarks on a sex-and-substance-fueled quest to locate David and suss out his motives for contacting her, leading her to cross paths with a private investigator and a sketchy online gambling startup. Though Vivian's self-destructive tendencies and jaundiced first-person narrative nod at noir, Soloski's plot and characters lack nuance and authenticity. Theatergoers may appreciate Vivian's copious references to classic plays, but crime fiction fans are likely to be left wanting. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Company. (Dec.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
When a New York theater critic is drawn into playing amateur detective, her dark world gets even darker. "I am, of necessity, an imitation of myself--a sharp smile, an acid joke, an abyss where a woman should be. For a decade and more I have allowed myself only this lone role, a minor one: Vivian Parry, actor's scourge and girl-about-town." In her debut, Soloski, a culture reporter at the New York Times, crafts a thriller narrated by Vivian Parry, a brittle, unhappy, relentlessly clever theater critic. Since her mother's untimely death when she was a college student snuffed out her desire and ability to be on stage, Vivian has found her only pleasure in attending plays and issuing brutal assessments of them expressed in "diamond bright" prose, coupled with daily recourse to pills, alcohol, and casual sex. Shortly after she deigns to be interviewed by a whiny man named David Adler for his master's thesis, she receives a visit from his tearful fiancee saying he has disappeared and Vivian is the last person who saw him. As utterly out of character as it seems, she decides to go undercover to investigate Adler's disappearance; this is both preceded and followed by many more credibility-stretching events. It's worth at least pretending to suspend disbelief and ride out Vivian's Lost Weekend death spiral for whole slew of reasons--fun supporting characters (a louche actress best friend, a flamboyant receptionist at Vivian's magazine), ultra-snappy dialogue and metaphors, rough sex (if you like that sort of thing), and finally an over-the-top payoff that neatly pulls all the wild threads together, followed by a totally impossible but nonetheless touching denouement. Like Dorothy Parker, the narrator's role model, this book is almost too clever for its own good. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
