Network TodayNetwork Today
    What's Hot

    What the sonic boom and Capitol security scare have to do with 9/11 attacks

    June 7, 2023

    When Politics Saves Lives: a Good-News Story

    June 7, 2023

    Video and Photos Show a Tiny, Critically Endangered Porpoise Still Hanging On

    June 7, 2023
    Facebook Twitter Instagram
    • About
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms
    • Contact
    Facebook Twitter Instagram
    Wednesday, June 7
    Network TodayNetwork Today
    • Home
    • News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Energy
    • Technology
    • Health
    • Lifestyle
    • Sports
    Network TodayNetwork Today
    Home » It Started as a Romantic Idyll. It Ended With a Stack of Corpses.

    It Started as a Romantic Idyll. It Ended With a Stack of Corpses.

    January 27, 20223 Mins Read Lifestyle
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr WhatsApp Email Reddit
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

    It’s clear, from the portentous flashbacks, that the two women — Amma and Brittany — are each concealing past traumas and what can best be described as unresolved interpersonal issues. But they are not the only sketchy characters.

    Also pulling up to Meroe: Jake and Eliza, a hot couple with a boat full of booze and several continents’ worth of secrets, and Robbie, who has answered the casting call for White Trash Guy. He was the sort of customer at her waitress job, Lux thinks, who “ordered Pabst Blue Ribbon and had eyes that slid over our bare legs like slime.” (Indeed, he drinks beer for breakfast.)

    But although Robbie vindictively smashes their radios, thus delaying their departure, he might not even be the most dangerous visitor, or the one with the most twisted back story. “Accidents happen so easily out here,” one of the women says. “A million different ways to die.”

    The ending feels like that great moment in “Body Heat” when the camera swoops down to reveal the identity of the last person standing at the end of all the mayhem. Who will it be?


    THE OVERNIGHT GUEST (Park Row, 335 pp., $28.99) is a bland title for Heather Gudenkauf’s unbearably gripping new novel. It refers to a little boy whom Wylie Lark finds nearly frozen as a storm rages outside the rented house where she is writing her latest book, about a terrible crime that took place there two decades earlier. (Suspend your disbelief about the inadvisability of holing up in a remote former crime scene during a punishing Iowa winter, especially when you have rendered your cellphone inoperable by dropping it into an icy puddle.)

    Wylie’s battles against the weather and other, even worse, adversities form one part of the narrative. The second describes the lead-up to and the aftermath of the past crime, which traumatized a community and left a couple dead, their young daughter shot in a cornfield and two other people missing. The third strand, which will be familiar to anyone who has read Emma Donoghue’s “Room,” is about a woman and her child kept prisoner by a man who arrives intermittently to terrorize them. Each narrative thread is fully realized, wholly absorbing and almost painfully suspenseful. The reader will form theories about how they fit together, and will be only partially right. Having ostensibly revealed the recipe for the elaborate cake she intends to bake, Gudenkauf introduces a secret ingredient late in the game that changes everything. The ending is a bit too pat after so much tension, but the journey is mesmerizing.

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

    Related Posts

    Apple Knows You Didn’t Mean to Type ‘Ducking’

    June 7, 2023

    Popcast (Deluxe): Taylor Swift and Matty Healy, Plus ‘The Idol’

    June 7, 2023

    As the Tonys Head Uptown, Step Inside the United Palace ‘Dream World’

    June 7, 2023

    It’s the Perelman Performing Arts Center, But Bloomberg Gave More

    June 7, 2023

    ‘The Ultimatum: Queer Love’ Is a TV Rarity With Familiar Drama

    June 7, 2023

    Cisco Swank ‘Is Black Music. All of It.’

    June 7, 2023
    Trending

    What the sonic boom and Capitol security scare have to do with 9/11 attacks

    June 7, 2023

    When Politics Saves Lives: a Good-News Story

    June 7, 2023

    Video and Photos Show a Tiny, Critically Endangered Porpoise Still Hanging On

    June 7, 2023

    Los Angeles Times to Cut More Than 10% of Newsroom

    June 7, 2023
    Latest News

    Florida university must reinstate professor who was fired over ‘Black privilege’ tweets

    May 23, 2022

    Indiana man gets 45 years in prison for cold case killing for cooperation against accomplice in triple murder

    November 8, 2022

    ‘I’m Planning on Running’ for Re-election in 2024, Biden Says

    April 10, 2023

    House Democrats pass $739B Manchin-Schumer spending and tax increase bill

    August 12, 2022

    Illinois College to Close, Hurt by Pandemic and Ransomware Attack

    May 9, 2022

    Pennsylvania chocolate factory explosion leaves five dead, two missing: report

    March 26, 2023

    Network Today is one of the biggest English news portal, we provide the latest news from all around the world.

    We're social. Connect with us:

    Facebook Twitter Instagram Pinterest YouTube
    Recent

    What the sonic boom and Capitol security scare have to do with 9/11 attacks

    June 7, 2023

    When Politics Saves Lives: a Good-News Story

    June 7, 2023

    Video and Photos Show a Tiny, Critically Endangered Porpoise Still Hanging On

    June 7, 2023
    Featured

    Houston-area corporal’s killing: Suspect Oscar Rosales had help from 4, authorities say

    January 29, 2022

    Nationals’ Victor Robles has perfect reaction toward Madison Bumgarner’s ‘clown’ comment

    July 25, 2022

    India to surpass China as world’s biggest buyer of minerals

    August 1, 2022
    Copyright ©️ All rights reserved | Network Today
    • About
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms
    • Contact

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.