Traps

January 14, 2013
Bezos (The Testing of Luther Albright) has a knack for the slow-build. In her second novel she galvanizes the mundane with a sense of dread, presenting four women trapped by sad circumstances and their own fallibility, as they gradually make their way through four tense days during which their lives intersect. Dana, a security guard, watches over Jessica, an actress, as she goes to face her exploitative father and retrieve a dog; while Vivian, a 15-year-old mother of twins who is running from more than one abuser, answers Lynn’s ad for help caring for her dogs at Three Paws Dog Rescue. All four characters have secrets—some, it turns out, involving one another. None of them are at all happy, and the author keeps the reader in suspense as to what the fifth day will bring each woman: doom or salvation? Bezos creates a sad, melancholic, nearly melodramatic world, almost too hard to stomach until we begin to see what she sees: “Life is full of things that feel like traps.... Sometimes later we see that they led us where we needed to go.” Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM.

January 15, 2013
The lives of four troubled women converge outside Las Vegas in this follow-up from Bezos (The Testing of Luther Albright, 2005). This cleverly orchestrated, cool-toned novel opens with Dana, a top-shelf bodyguard, fending off a dog attack without breaking a sweat. The scene serves as a kind of allegory for what Bezos is up to throughout the book: She wants to explore how women respond to threats, and do it free of emotional overreaction. Dana is charged with monitoring Jessica, an Oscar-winning actress who's compelled to visit her ailing estranged father and care for his dog. The dog brings them into the orbit of Lynn, a recovering alcoholic who runs an animal shelter, and she in turn has taken in Vivian, a 17-year-old prostitute who's run off with her twin infants to escape her abusive pimp. The setup is pulpy and all the more preposterous for being set in just four days. Yet Bezos' prose doesn't dramatize--at times, it's as removed as a dossier, and a spare image of a black widow spider resting on the car seat where Vivian's babies sleep is enough to convey her brittle, dangerous milieu. The novel isn't short on conflict--Dana is struggling to help her boyfriend, who has cancer, and Vivian's pimp makes an ugly reappearance. But its drama is powered as much by conversation and the women's interior thoughts. Each woman is impressively rendered for such a slim book, and each is at a different level of flinty no-nonsensehood that Bezos implies is essential to avoid the "traps" of the title--mostly men, but also just life itself. Dana, with her low resting heart rate, is the platonic ideal, but Vivian's complicated but determined escape is equally admirable. This book's emotional remove is something of an asset, emphasizing the seriousness of the characters' predicaments without locking them into the stock, manipulative plots.

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February 15, 2013

Opening in contemporary California, Bezos's (The Testing of Luther Albright) latest follows Dana, a security specialist and celebrity bodyguard, as she cares for a boyfriend with cancer and undertakes a new assignment guarding a paparazzi-plagued actress, Jessica. Their stories soon intertwine with those of Vivian, a teenage mother on the run from her abusive pimp, and Lynn, proprietor of an animal sanctuary in rural Nevada. VERDICT Bezos skillfully interweaves the stories of these four compelling characters, all of whom are facing individual challenges and seeking escape and peace. This is a fast read, told in the present tense; the reflection comes later. Recommend to women's fiction fans seeking novels with more substance and to book clubs looking for contemporary options.--Jennifer B. Stidham, Baytown, TX

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2013
This is the story of four women in distress. Dana is a high-tech security guard who discovers she is pregnant. The father is quite possibly dying of cancer. Vivian has twins, doesn't know who the father is, and is living with a man who is using her to entertain his business associates. Lynn, a recovering alcoholic with one hand, runs a dog shelter on her farm. Jessicamovie star, mother of two, and budding agoraphobicis burdened with a father who sells information about her on the Internet. Gradually, we discover that Dana is guarding Jessica, and Vivian applies for a job at Lynn's dog farm. By the end of the book, all four of them have come together and eased one another's distress. Bezos deftly weaves these disparate stories together and creates a moving tale of redemption. Some of the traps release a little too easily, but the characters are involving and the pacing so right that it doesn't matter.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)