Fragile: A Novel
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Product Description
Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It’s a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another’s kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows’s insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients’ lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son, Rick, disappears, Maggie’s intuitive gift proves useful to the case—and also dangerous.
Eerie parallels soon emerge between Charlene’s disappearance and the abduction of another local girl that shook the community years ago when Maggie was a teenager. The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely. Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn. In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father.
“I know how a moment can spiral out of control,” Jones says to a shocked Maggie as he searches Rick’s room for incriminating evidence. “How the consequences of one careless action can cost you everything.”
As she tries to reassure him that Rick embodies his father in all of the important ways, Maggie realizes this might be exactly what Jones fears most. Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene’s disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret—one that could destroy everything she holds dear. This thrilling novel about one community’s intricate yet fragile bonds will leave readers asking, How well do I know the people I love? and How far would I go to protect them?
From the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Another fantastic thriller from Lisa Unger. I have now read several of her books now and they are all superb! Recommend this book to all thriller fans!
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
From "When Jones Cooper was younger, he didn't believe in mistakes" to 323 pages later and "As she told them all about her buried memory, she felt an awe at how all their separate lives were twisted and tangled, growing over an around one another...,"
FRAGILE enchants. It is a sensitive, penetrating story of complex people burdened by the past.
Jones, a cop,lives with his psychologist wife, Maggie, and rebellious teenage son, Ricky, in The Hollows, a small insular town outside of New York City. It's the kind of place that Maggie had once found dull, constraining, but now finds comforting as people know each other, and seemingly care for one another. It seems that Ricky might benefit from some observation as he's a punk kid with a silver hoop in his nose, sometimes referred to as "Johnny Rotten" by his dad. Try as Maggie may she can't seem to reach Ricky any more but loves him with all her heart, remembering "...how pure and unblemished, how soft and pink his baby skin had been."
Ricky is going with Charlene, an undesirable companion in the eyes of Maggie and Jones. She is "a little girl lost hiding behind black eyeliner and vamp red lipstick." However, Maggie does her best to understand, to accept Charlene because she loves Ricky.
However, understanding and acceptance go out the window when Charlene vanishes. To some her disappearance is a frightening reminder of a teenager who was abducted and murdered years ago when Maggie herself was a teenager. Jones is leading the investigation in efforts to find Charlene and, shocking to Maggie, begins to look very closely at their son. A once tranquil community is once again shattered by a mysterious disappearance.
In a desperate attempt to prove Ricky innocent of any wrongdoing Maggie begins an investigation of her own and makes a shocking discovery.
No novice at creating suspenseful, gripping narratives Lisa Unger has once again penned a stay-up-all-night story.
Enjoy!
- Gail Cooke
FRAGILE enchants. It is a sensitive, penetrating story of complex people burdened by the past.
Jones, a cop,lives with his psychologist wife, Maggie, and rebellious teenage son, Ricky, in The Hollows, a small insular town outside of New York City. It's the kind of place that Maggie had once found dull, constraining, but now finds comforting as people know each other, and seemingly care for one another. It seems that Ricky might benefit from some observation as he's a punk kid with a silver hoop in his nose, sometimes referred to as "Johnny Rotten" by his dad. Try as Maggie may she can't seem to reach Ricky any more but loves him with all her heart, remembering "...how pure and unblemished, how soft and pink his baby skin had been."
Ricky is going with Charlene, an undesirable companion in the eyes of Maggie and Jones. She is "a little girl lost hiding behind black eyeliner and vamp red lipstick." However, Maggie does her best to understand, to accept Charlene because she loves Ricky.
However, understanding and acceptance go out the window when Charlene vanishes. To some her disappearance is a frightening reminder of a teenager who was abducted and murdered years ago when Maggie herself was a teenager. Jones is leading the investigation in efforts to find Charlene and, shocking to Maggie, begins to look very closely at their son. A once tranquil community is once again shattered by a mysterious disappearance.
In a desperate attempt to prove Ricky innocent of any wrongdoing Maggie begins an investigation of her own and makes a shocking discovery.
No novice at creating suspenseful, gripping narratives Lisa Unger has once again penned a stay-up-all-night story.
Enjoy!
- Gail Cooke
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
95 reviews
49 of 53 people found the following review helpful
"A moment of pleasure can lead to a lifetime of pain."
3 Aug 2010
Format:Hardcover
Unger goes off the beaten track in this novel, but not so far as for her work to be unrecognizable. While contemporary, this mystery dredges up a town's past and reawakens dark secrets that have altered the lives of those involved. Not far from New York City, The Hollows enjoys a small town identity, neighbors who have known each other since grade school. The only anomaly is the younger generation, infected by the angst of the times and the usual anti-social behaviors of adolescence, once happy and playful children become sulking teenagers, no longer as pliable or as willing to endure their parents' failings or expectations. Unger uses this generation gap to frame her story, as Maggie, a psychologist returned from NYC to marry a high-school football player turned detective, Jones Cooper, the two raising a son, Ricky. Once a sweet, joyful little boy, Ricky has morphed to a sullen teen, resisting his mother's overtures and in constant conflict with his father.
The twist is in the secret history of The Hollows. When Ricky's girlfriend, Charlene, disappears, everyone remembers another disappearance from years ago, the death of a classmate that has reverberated through the lives of the main characters and left many with uneasy consciences. And for all the disaffection of the younger generation, more than one older resident is disturbed when long-buried secrets are unearthed. While the father-son conflict is exacerbated when Jones investigates Charlene's whereabouts, Maggie jumps to her son's defense to avoid concerns about the state of her marriage, counseling patients in an office connected to her home. Much of the drama is stirred up by Maggie's fears and lack of professional boundaries, but there is no shortage of guilty parties as Unger taps into the small town psyche of The Hollows. Sometimes obvious, sometimes clever, Unger indulges in a lot of emotionalism and the dashed expectations of youth. But that is her style- and her charm- as a writer, the murky territory of memory and forgiveness. Luan Gaines/2010.
The twist is in the secret history of The Hollows. When Ricky's girlfriend, Charlene, disappears, everyone remembers another disappearance from years ago, the death of a classmate that has reverberated through the lives of the main characters and left many with uneasy consciences. And for all the disaffection of the younger generation, more than one older resident is disturbed when long-buried secrets are unearthed. While the father-son conflict is exacerbated when Jones investigates Charlene's whereabouts, Maggie jumps to her son's defense to avoid concerns about the state of her marriage, counseling patients in an office connected to her home. Much of the drama is stirred up by Maggie's fears and lack of professional boundaries, but there is no shortage of guilty parties as Unger taps into the small town psyche of The Hollows. Sometimes obvious, sometimes clever, Unger indulges in a lot of emotionalism and the dashed expectations of youth. But that is her style- and her charm- as a writer, the murky territory of memory and forgiveness. Luan Gaines/2010.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Bogged down with too many unnecessary details
15 Sep 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Lisa Unger writes of a wonderful little town in New York, whose secrets are deadly. The Hollows, a sleepy town of upright citizens, seems to be plagued with loosing young girls. Two such cases converge one day as a young girl runs away, or is she abducted? This parallels a similar tragedy decades earlier. The whole town is interwoven in each others' lives, so it is no surprise that everyone in this small town has everything to do with every event.
The overall story is bogged down by too many instances of intertwined lives, back stories, and little climaxes. Every page has the coming of disaster, but quickly resolves itself. The overall plot of the two abductions fluctuate in an interesting suspense, but this suspense is lost as the story continues to drag on and on and on.
Yet the worst problem with this novel is that Unger assumes you cannot get her point: we are fragile, interconnected, imperfect, yet beautiful. But she continually hits you over the head with everything.
After a while I found myself saying enough already, resolve this. And she eventually does, and the story wraps up perfectly with a perfect, yet fragile bow.
If Unger had assumed more from her audience, trimmed some of the fat and left some things to the readers' imaginations, it would have been more suspenseful novel. It was an interesting story, it just needed better execution.
The overall story is bogged down by too many instances of intertwined lives, back stories, and little climaxes. Every page has the coming of disaster, but quickly resolves itself. The overall plot of the two abductions fluctuate in an interesting suspense, but this suspense is lost as the story continues to drag on and on and on.
Yet the worst problem with this novel is that Unger assumes you cannot get her point: we are fragile, interconnected, imperfect, yet beautiful. But she continually hits you over the head with everything.
After a while I found myself saying enough already, resolve this. And she eventually does, and the story wraps up perfectly with a perfect, yet fragile bow.
If Unger had assumed more from her audience, trimmed some of the fat and left some things to the readers' imaginations, it would have been more suspenseful novel. It was an interesting story, it just needed better execution.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
A SENSITIVE, PENETRATING STORY OF COMPLEX PEOPLE
12 Aug 2010
Format:Hardcover
From "When Jones Cooper was younger, he didn't believe in mistakes" to 323 pages later and "As she told them all about her buried memory, she felt an awe at how all their separate lives were twisted and tangled, growing over an around one another...,"
FRAGILE enchants. It is a sensitive, penetrating story of complex people burdened by the past.
Jones, a cop,lives with his psychologist wife, Maggie, and rebellious teenage son, Ricky, in The Hollows, a small insular town outside of New York City. It's the kind of place that Maggie had once found dull, constraining, but now finds comforting as people know each other, and seemingly care for one another. It seems that Ricky might benefit from some observation as he's a punk kid with a silver hoop in his nose, sometimes referred to as "Johnny Rotten" by his dad. Try as Maggie may she can't seem to reach Ricky any more but loves him with all her heart, remembering "...how pure and unblemished, how soft and pink his baby skin had been."
Ricky is going with Charlene, an undesirable companion in the eyes of Maggie and Jones. She is "a little girl lost hiding behind black eyeliner and vamp red lipstick." However, Maggie does her best to understand, to accept Charlene because she loves Ricky.
However, understanding and acceptance go out the window when Charlene vanishes. To some her disappearance is a frightening reminder of a teenager who was abducted and murdered years ago when Maggie herself was a teenager. Jones is leading the investigation in efforts to find Charlene and, shocking to Maggie, begins to look very closely at their son. A once tranquil community is once again shattered by a mysterious disappearance.
In a desperate attempt to prove Ricky innocent of any wrongdoing Maggie begins an investigation of her own and makes a shocking discovery.
No novice at creating suspenseful, gripping narratives Lisa Unger has once again penned a stay-up-all-night story.
Enjoy!
- Gail Cooke
FRAGILE enchants. It is a sensitive, penetrating story of complex people burdened by the past.
Jones, a cop,lives with his psychologist wife, Maggie, and rebellious teenage son, Ricky, in The Hollows, a small insular town outside of New York City. It's the kind of place that Maggie had once found dull, constraining, but now finds comforting as people know each other, and seemingly care for one another. It seems that Ricky might benefit from some observation as he's a punk kid with a silver hoop in his nose, sometimes referred to as "Johnny Rotten" by his dad. Try as Maggie may she can't seem to reach Ricky any more but loves him with all her heart, remembering "...how pure and unblemished, how soft and pink his baby skin had been."
Ricky is going with Charlene, an undesirable companion in the eyes of Maggie and Jones. She is "a little girl lost hiding behind black eyeliner and vamp red lipstick." However, Maggie does her best to understand, to accept Charlene because she loves Ricky.
However, understanding and acceptance go out the window when Charlene vanishes. To some her disappearance is a frightening reminder of a teenager who was abducted and murdered years ago when Maggie herself was a teenager. Jones is leading the investigation in efforts to find Charlene and, shocking to Maggie, begins to look very closely at their son. A once tranquil community is once again shattered by a mysterious disappearance.
In a desperate attempt to prove Ricky innocent of any wrongdoing Maggie begins an investigation of her own and makes a shocking discovery.
No novice at creating suspenseful, gripping narratives Lisa Unger has once again penned a stay-up-all-night story.
Enjoy!
- Gail Cooke
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