Synopsis
Returning home to care for his aging mother, Pilot is determined to unravel the truth about the unsolved, twenty-year-old disappearance of his younger sister, a mysterious crime that has had an unsettling impact on his own life and well-being. A first novel. 100,000 first printing.
Reviews
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 readerAinnumerable red herrings are cast before us as to the real guilt in Fiona's disappearanceAthat 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 talentAhis evocation of the trauma created over the years by Fiona's fate is tellingAbut 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. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A classy suspense debut pitting two men against each other in that struggle between brothers that's as old as the Bible.In this version, you're not quite sure who's Cain and who's Abel until the author is ready to let you figure it out. Eric Fairlie and younger brother Pilot (named by their flier father in an early attempt to influence career choice) furnish little evidence that they share a gene pool. Eric is brilliant, handsome, and a successful neurosurgeon while Pilot is not noticeably handsome, brilliant, or by any measure successful. Diagnosed a schizophrenic, Pilot battles to stay tuned into reality—to keep his feet on the ground, as it were, in an ironic subversion of Dad's hopes for him. There was a third Fairlie sib, Fiona, who vanished 20 years ago at age seven, never to be found despite an all-out police search. Fiona's mysterious disappearance soured an already shaky fraternal relationship. Did Eric play a part in whatever disaster befell her? Pilot insists that Eric killed her brutally and cold-bloodedly. But Pilot is delusional: his therapist says so, and so does everyone else, no one more emphatically than Pilot himself. Yet suddenly Pilot claims to have in his possession a gore-encrusted knife and a tennis shoe last seen on Fiona's small foot, though he won't tell where they're hidden. If such evidence in fact exists, who does it really implicate? In other words, who is raveling and who is unraveling? Skillfully shifting his points of view, Smith keeps us close to his characters, interested in their complexities, and guessing about their motives. Stylish, substantive, and savvy. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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.
---Craig Shufelt, Gladwin Cty. Lib., MI
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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