 |
| Picture credit; Amazon |
You
Author: Caroline Kepnes
Kepnes' ingeniously claustrophobic debut, in which love has a completely new meaning, is overshadowed by a sense of impending doom.
The story is narrated from the viewpoint of Joe Goldberg, a seemingly ordinary Manhattan bookshop employee, and is organized like a protracted monologue to the "you" in the title, a young woman named Guinevere Beck who grows to be the focus of Joe's rabid adoration. They connect through literature after their chance encounter in the bookshop, where she is an ambitious writer just beginning an MFA program. Before we discover how far Joe will go to claim Beck—her chosen name—as his own, it seems innocent enough, even romantic. Kepnes skillfully documents Joe and Beck's "courtship" using contemporary technology: He casually lifts her phone and examines her text messages after hacking into her email account and stalking her on Twitter. Joe feels responsible for protecting Beck from the potential threats in her life, including the clingy, affluent Peach Salinger (yep, a descendant of that Salinger), Beck's hard-partying ex-boyfriend Benji, and her therapist, the slick-talking Dr. Nicky. The inevitable meeting of Joe and Beck only serves to exacerbate Joe's possessive, predatory tendencies. Every email is processed and searched for hidden significance, and every sentence is examined as though it were the German Enigma Code. The romance is undoubtedly doomed, but Kepnes leaves the reader wondering as to how exactly it will end.
Carbon
ReplyDeleteWhat?
Delete