Kaethe

This may well be the most terrifying book I've ever read. The cheerful bright yellow cover (glow-in the dark on the paperback), the jacket copy, the set-up suggests a classic quest. On the surface this is a story about a bookstore employee and his friends solving a book-related mystery in 21st century USA. And so well-crafted is the book that you can read it and enjoy it on just that level alone.

But behind and beneath that is a deeper, darker, unacknowledged secret, and a tragedy so profound that it is never addressed. There are only subtle hints.

[spoiler]Clay's friend, a wealthy entrepreneur, asks Clay to find him a woman director, which the friend has been unable to do, and Clay can't do it either.

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[spoiler]Even though writing, publishing, selling, buying, and reading books overwhelmingly skew toward women in our world, in Clay's world there are virtually no women involved, and no one ever dares to mention their absence.

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I want to give the book five stars, because I enjoyed the unspoken terror, the psychological unease that reminds me of Shirley Jackson. But I can't, because that deep horror isn't resolved by the end, and I admit it: I need a proper resolution. Nonetheless, I admire Mr. Sloan's accomplishment in creating a book that haunts me still, weeks after I put it down.

Library copy