Why would Maya need a key to a cabin she’s already inside? But as soon as she thinks it, the thought slips away, and what happens over the following few minutes will lie buried beneath the lowest cellar floor of her head for seven years. [p. 234]
Maya has problems sleeping: years later, she's still haunted by the memory of her best friend Aubrey dying whilst talking to Maya's then-boyfriend, Frank. Now, even though Maya's life is superficially delightful, she's addicted to sleeping pills and self-medicating with alcohol -- and it's unfortunate that the week she stops taking the pills is the week she sees a viral video of another young woman dying suddenly in Frank's company. Painfully aware of gaps in her memory, she returns to her mother's house to try to solve the mystery of what happened to the unknown woman, and to Aubrey ... and to Maya herself. Maybe she can even find the cabin deep in the pinewoods near Frank's own childhood home, the cabin that Frank built with his own hands, the cabin that Maya remembers with utmost clarity.
There were some interesting aspects to this novel, not least the way in which Frank has affected Maya, Aubrey and the woman in the video: though I think I understood this before Maya did, the description of her discovery was compelling. On the other hand, I never really felt a sense of dread or inevitability about Frank. More intriguing was the story of Maya's father, 'disappeared' by the regime in Guatemala before Maya's birth, and his unfinished magical realist novel, which seems to mirror some of the secrets and some of the doubts that Maya's experiencing.
Slightly annoyed by the 'present' scenes being told in the past tense and the 'past' scenes being told in present tense, though I suppose this does mirror the immediacy and powerful emotion of Maya's teenaged years.
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