Raveling

July 3, 2000
This first novel depends a great deal on gimmicks. The hero, from whose disturbed point of view much of the story is told, is the oddly named Pilot Airie (his father was an airline pilot). Diagnosed as a schizophrenic, his life has been off the rails ever since his younger sister, Fiona, disappeared mysteriously during a drunken party his parents threw during his childhood. His older brother, Eric, is a cool, collected neurosurgeon; his mother is a quondam medical specialist, whose eyesight seems to be unaccountably vanishing and whose mental state is increasingly disoriented. The overriding question, to which an attractive young psychotherapist, the elaborately named Katherine Jane De Quincey-Joy, must address herself, as she treats Pilot and begins an affair with Eric, is: whatever happened to Fiona 20 years ago, and can she do anything about it? The problem with much of this fitfully gripping, but just as often irritating, book is that much of the action is seen through Pilot's eyes, and he is a notoriously unreliable witness; he also appears to be omnipresent and all-knowing, which makes him a convenient substitute for the author. There is some vivid writing, and a certain eerie atmosphere is created around this weird family. But Moore Smith seems so intent on tricking the reader--innumerable red herrings are cast before us as to the real guilt in Fiona's disappearance--that one tends to lose patience with the whole proceeding. When even the dead Fiona is granted a narrative voice, briefly, about her grisly demise, it seems that authorial license has overrun the mark. Moore Smith has talent--his evocation of the trauma created over the years by Fiona's fate is telling--but his book is too disorganized and ill-focused to be an effective thriller, and too determined to provide some lurid chills to be the imaginative literary fiction it aspires to.

May 1, 2000
Though revolving around the 20-year-old unsolved disappearance of a young girl, Smith's exceptional first novel is foremost a tale of family. Since his sister's vanishing, diagnosed schizophrenic Pilot Airie has had plenty of time to question his sanity and wonder if he truly recalls what happened on the evening of her disappearance. With the help of Katherine, the psychologist appointed to help him after a recent episode, Pilot attempts to remember that fateful night to begin his own healing process. While Pilot's account is the centerpiece of the story, each member of his family must undergo a catharsis: the control-freak brother, the mother who can't accept the breakup of her family, and the distant father who can't stop blaming himself for his daughter's disappearance. This wonderfully simple, engaging, and well-written story deserves a spot in public library fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/00.]--Craig Shufelt, Gladwin Cty. Lib., MI

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2000
The narrator of this haunting blend of mystery and magic realism, Pilot James Aire, witnessed the unraveling of his family and his own sanity after his sister disappeared at the age of seven. Twenty years later, on coming home to care for his ailing mother, Aire determines to "ravel" the threads of what happened to his sister and his family. Aire is hampered by his know-it-all older brother, a neurosurgeon, and doubts about his own mental competence, as he swings in and out of psychotic episodes and suicidal longings. The reader is constantly baffled by whether the chilling revelations uncovered by this unreliable narrator are to be believed. The quicksilver changes in Aire's thinking about what happened to his little sister, and who is responsible, and the zigzagging of the plot from past to present to Aire's own no-man's land of doubt and grief make this a challenging thriller. ((Reviewed May 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)