May 4, 2020
Immergut (The Captives) flirts with supernatural elements in a beguiling, uneven tale of a woman’s encounter with her younger self. Abigail Willard, 46, sees herself at 22 one night on her way home from work in Brooklyn, under an awning where there used to be a nightclub
. The sighting triggers a flood of memories of her 20s—young, beautiful, reckless, an aspiring artist, and just on the cusp of meeting a lover whose abandonment would set her on a new, unsatisfying path. Abigail, now an art director at a pharmaceutical company, begins lingering in Greenwich Village, where she used to live, and introducers herself to this younger version, who goes by A. Abigail tries to warn A of the heartache and turmoil to come, while her own life is collapsing. Abigail’s husband, Dennis, loses his job, and her son, Pete, falls in with an antifascist group and vandalizes a house in Brooklyn. The detective in charge of Pete’s case, meanwhile, begins flirting with Abigail, a development she hides from Dennis. As Abigail and A’s paths continue to overlap, Abigail comes closer to remembering long-buried traumatic memories of her 20s. Immergut’s busy jumble of plotlines doesn’t quite cohere or resolve the nature of the sightings, and the overwrought prose doesn’t help (“the rain taps my scalp with tiny wet fingers”), but there is plenty of suspense and intrigue. Still, she doesn’t stick the landing.
May 1, 2020
A middle-aged marketing executive questions whether she's seeing doppelg�ngers or suffering delusions. Abigail Willard, 46, is heading home to Brooklyn after a long day at her job as art director at a pharmaceutical company when she spies her 22-year-old double at a pay phone near the Holland Tunnel. She leaps out of her taxi to get a better look only for the girl to hail the cab and disappear. Abby doesn't mention the incident to her husband, Dennis, or her sons, Pete and Benjamin; it was dark and rainy and she was probably just tired. Then, several days later, she happens upon her younger self reading on a bench outside a library she used to frequent--and the encounters only escalate from there. Is Abby hallucinating? Is the figure a friendly ghost of sorts, meant to remind the former painter of the dreams she abandoned? Or is this a chance for Abby to prevent whatever tragedy caused her to forget a year of her 20s? Meanwhile, Dennis fears he'll be fired, and 16-year-old Pete becomes involved with an increasingly violent group of antifa activists, earning him--and Abigail--the attention of a handsome police detective. Although an unidentified individual's quest to solve "the many mysteries about Ms. Willard's role in the deadly events of 2015" forms the book's frame, Immergut allows the bulk of the tale to unfold via Abby's journal. Her entries are evocatively written, keenly self-aware, and peppered with artful observations that lend the story texture, vibrancy, and depth. At once a mind-bending puzzle and a profound meditation on love, fate, ambition, and regret.
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June 1, 2020
Visual artist Abigail's life is falling apart. She and her husband are both cheating: she with a detective, he with another artist. Her career is stalled, one of her sons is addicted to his girlfriend, and the other has been fraternizing with a group of antifascist radicals. To top it all off, Abigail has been seeing her younger self roaming around New York City. Abby is equal parts horrified and enchanted by the hauntings; they give her a physical look into her past. She sees herself in her early twenties, right before her life was changed irrevocably by a charismatic boyfriend and a tragic accident. As the sightings become more frequent, Abigail's behavior becomes more and more erratic. Her house catches fire, its origins suspicious. She falls in with her son's Antifa beat. The events are commentated by email correspondence between neuroscience experts discussing Abigail's case, which greatly heightens the intensity of her unraveling?it's clear early on that Abigail's story made history. Immergut (The Captives, 2018) delivers a furious page-turner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)