The Phantom Limb

September 5, 2011
As this thriller begins, Isaac, newly
arrived in town, is totally miserable: “A mental darkness surrounded Isaac. He was fourteen, and he had no friends.” His father has recently died; his pianist mother is in the hospital, leaving him in charge of his grandfather, who has Alzheimer’s disease; and the malicious Fitzpatrick twins are making his life hell at school. His only fun comes from the sophisticated optical illusions that he collects. Then odd things start to happen: the hospital staff starts acting strangely as his mother gets sicker. Isaac finds a “mirror box,” a therapeutic optical illusion designed to give amputees the appearance of still having two hands, and while he’s playing with it, someone else’s hand appears in the mirror. Soon Isaac uncovers evidence that his mother is being slowly murdered and that other pianists have also died under mysterious circumstances. Unfortunately, this collaboration is not one of the late Sleator’s better works. The characters are broadly drawn, and the hospital plot isn’t particularly believable, although there’s plenty of action and a genuinely sicko villain. Ages 14–up.

August 15, 2011

Not even hammer-and-tongs plotting pounds this jumbled mess of random McGuffins into a coherent whole.

A therapeutic "mirror box" that reflects urgent gestures from ghostly hands sucks Isaac into a series of revealing visions and flashbacks through restroom mirrors. Through these glimpses, Isaac comes to realize that the reason his hospitalized piano-teacher mother has been marked to have her arm amputated is because she's in the care of a nurse who is a serial killer with a particular thing for pianists. Can he whisk her out of the conveniently unstaffed ICU? Yes, with help from two school bullies who suddenly turn into allies, a grandfather with Alzheimer's who suddenly regains his mind and a vertigo-inducing optical illusion that distracts the killer when she comes after him with a bone saw. Repeated anxious ward visits, multiple red herrings and not one but two scenes in which Isaac is forcibly sedated and then subjected to medical torture (a brutal endoscopy and an MRI) add to the page count but not the weak suspense.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011

Gr 6-8-Isaac, new in town and friendless, is having a really bad time. His mother is in the hospital and his grandfather has started to forget things. When the 14-year-old finds a strange mirror box in the attic, he does a little research and discovers that it was once used to negate phantom pain in someone with an amputated limb. He discovers that Joey, the child who lived in the house before him, first lost a limb and then his life. Now Joey is using the mirror box to communicate with Isaac to potentially save his mother from the same psychotic killer. It's up to Isaac and some newly found friends to rescue her from the hospital where she just keeps getting worse and worse. The premise for this thriller is promising, but the execution is not quite spot-on. Some plot points are a little confusing, and many kids will find the story predictable. Isaac's character is believable and endearing, but other characters can be one-dimensional.-Jessica Miller, New Britain Public Library, CT

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2011
Grades 4-6 Sleator's posthumous thriller (written with Monticone) starts with a cool premise: in his new home, 14-year-old Isaac finds a mirror box, once used as therapy to relieve phantom limb pain in amputees, and is contacted by someone's phantom limb still inside it. Unfortunately, much of the drama is wasted with perplexing writing. Through the phantom limb, which inexplicably shows Isaac visions through bathroom mirrors, he learns that a killer nurse murdered the owner of the mirror box and that Isaac's mother, who is in the hospital, is next. His investigations put him on the killer's radar, who, in two terrifying but grossly illogical scenes, drugs Isaac and signs false medical orders, subjecting him to invasive medical treatments at the hands of unbelievably unaware doctors. There will be some interest in this, but be warned: it is largely a disjointed, if fast-paced, tale peppered with ridiculous contrivances and characters who do not behave like real people.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)