My Words Without Borders Review of "The Hypnotist" →
Chilling suspense + umlauts = literary pb&j
From Emma’s review:
Certain aberrations of human behavior seem guaranteed to provoke widespread fascination, and perhaps none more so than a mother-child bond gone terribly awry. How else to account for people traveling thousands of miles to fight for (literally, in one instance) courtroom seats in the Casey Anthony trial? Or the fact that those misery memoirs by Dave Pelzer, which graphically detail the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, are runaway bestsellers despite their depressing contents and disputed veracity? If you happened, then, to be a novelist with ambitions of publishing a breakout hit, one with international appeal and obvious movie potential, you’d be well-advised to shape your plot around the profound warping of maternal instincts, and the gruesome consequences thereof—precisely the canny decision made by Lars Kepler, author of The Hypnotist.
