Between Here and April

Starred review from July 7, 2008
How could a mother kill her children? This breathtaking first novel from photojournalist Kogan (Shutterbabe
) attempts a heart-wrenching answer. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Burns Steiger, a 41-year-old TV producer/journalist, has a hallucination while watching a performance of Medea
at a Manhattan theater; she sees her best friend in first grade, April Cassidy, who was killed by April's depressed mother, Adele, in 1972 in Potomac, Md., along with April's sister. In addition to exploring her memories in therapy, Lizzie interviews the Cassidys' former neighbor and others who knew the family for a proposed cable network documentary, but a priceless Pandora's box—tapes of Adele with her psychiatrist—provides the most startling revelations. Kogan skillfully interweaves Lizzie's struggles with her troubled marriage, parenting and a personal trauma shared in the Balkans with a former lover in this unflinching portrait of filicide, which still manages to find light in the darkness of a very disturbing subject.

August 1, 2008
What prompted Adele Cassidy to commit suicide and kill her two young daughters, April and Lily? Thats the 30-year-old mystery haunting photojournalist Elizabeth Burns in this engaging first novel. Burns, who had been childhood pals with April, grapples with the tragedys grizzly details as she reflects upon the realities of her own unhappy adult existence: an unsatisfying job shooting puff pieces, a husband who lately seems only interested in sex if it involves Sand M. Burns interviews the Cassidys remaining neighbors and friends, hoping the resulting story will help her break back into the hard-news biz. (She is also pondering an assignment in Iraq, which, as bad luck would have it, would pair her up with an old flame.) Although the novels characters hold our interest, Kogans fiction lacks the fire of her racy memoir, Shutterbabe (2000), which documented her experiences as a wartime photographer. She seems more at home writing about real-life international matters than life on the domestic front.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)