Take Me Apart

February 15, 2020
An ex-journalist falls into a churning vortex of dark secrets when she's hired to archive a famous photographer's personal effects. In 2017, after a harrowing incident ruined 30-year-old Kate Aitken's journalism career, she's eager to leave New York for sunny California and the idyllic little hamlet of Callinas, where her sweet but nosy Aunt Louise and Uncle Frank will put her up while she archives the tangible remains of controversial photographer Miranda Brand's life and work, a gig they hooked her up with. Miranda's husband, Jake, a painter, has recently died, leaving their son, Theo, with a hoarder's paradise of letters, documents, and possibly even a few of Miranda's viscerally intimate photos, which would be worth a fortune. Kate's first meeting with the enigmatic Theo, who's recently been divorced, is tense, but Theo's two small children, Jemima and Oscar, dull his sharp edges, and Kate soon becomes so immersed in her work that returning to Louise and Frank's home every evening is akin to waking from a fever dream. And they're eager for details. Miranda's death at 37 was ruled a suicide, but questions remain, and rumors, such as then 11-year-old Theo's possible culpability, persist. Kate, bound by a nondisclosure agreement, must remain silent but wonders if Miranda might have actually been murdered. When Kate discovers Miranda's diary, which often reads like dark poetry, she begins to feel an uneasy kinship with the artist, whose life was fractured by domestic violence, mental illness, and the inexorable demands of fame, motherhood, and the creative process. Kate's obsessive inquiry into Miranda's death and her growing attraction to Theo soon threaten to unravel the delicate threads of her new life and her increasingly precarious state of mind. Kate and Miranda are vividly rendered, and an entire novel could easily be crafted out of Miranda's fascinating diary, letters, and other ephemera, snippets of which are sprinkled liberally throughout. Sligar delivers an intriguing mystery while tackling big themes, especially sexism and the societal restraints placed on women's bodies and minds. The results are spellbinding. A raw and sophisticated debut.

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February 17, 2020
Sligar’s perceptive debut follows two women who appear collected on the surface but silently endure struggles. After 30-year-old Kate Aitken loses her copyediting job at a New York newspaper amid a disbelieved sexual harassment complaint against her superior, she moves to Northern California to take on a temporary archivist position, where she’s tasked with organizing the personal papers of photographer Miranda Brand, whose death two decades earlier was ruled a suicide. Supervised by Miranda’s adult son, Theo, Kate spends hours sifting through letters, receipts, and prints, and begins to suspect Miranda was murdered. As she builds her case, sneaking around to interview locals who knew the artist, Kate develops feelings for Theo and his two young children, and begins to shut out anything not involving the Brands. Alternating between chapters focusing on Kate and epistolary documents by the tormented Miranda, Sligar reveals Miranda’s unraveling throughout her brilliant career as she labors with parenthood and life with a manipulative husband. Though the novel falters somewhat in its home stretch, Sligar shows off a keen ear for dialogue, and Kate and Miranda hold interest. With a cool style and fast pace, Sligar achieves a propulsive exploration of these ambitious women’s inner turbulence in response to an abusive man in each of their lives.

April 1, 2020
Fleeing crisis in New York, Kate takes a job in Northern California, archiving the personal collections of photographer Miranda Brand, who was known for her often gruesome self-portraits and who died by suicide decades earlier. With her neat-freak tendencies, Kate is a natural fit for the monumental mess of the job and takes to it well, despite locals' warnings, and endless curiosity about the mysterious Brands. There's even a rumor that Theo, Miranda's son and Kate's boss, actually killed Miranda when he was just a boy. Before long, Kate is snooping in the house beyond Theo's clearly set boundaries even as she grows increasingly fond of him. Interspersed with Kate's chapters are Miranda's documents, including the diary Kate wasn't supposed to find?and in which she believes the truth lies. As the dual narrative unfolds, the two women's traumas come into focus, as do their similarities as women doggedly pursuing their work while wrestling with mental illness and straining under the weight of powerful men. Sligar handles her intricately structured story's threads with delicacy in this impressive, suspenseful debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

February 21, 2020

Kate Aitken's life has gone off track; a journalist, she finds herself despondent and jobless after accusing a senior editor of sexual abuse. A continent away, in Callinas, CA, Theo Brand needs a curator to sort a mountain of papers left by his mother, an internationally famous photographer with her own history of sexual abuse and mental illness. The job goes to Kate, who fortunately has an aunt living in the town. Miranda Brand's death (suicide? murder?) shook the art world decades back and still tantalizes, and rude, standoffish Theo expects Kate to be confined to the first floor of a large house with her work. But her curiosity gets the better of her, and she begins to explore the house when Theo is away, just as their relationship thaws. The story advances in alternate chapters with Kate's narrative interspersed with snippets from Miranda's papers and her hidden diary, making this really a study of two damaged and sympathetic women. This creates a plotting serpentine, but it works. VERDICT Love story, hate story, mystery--all in one. For patient readers of feminist, psychological suspense fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 9/30/19.]--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2019

Years after celebrated photographer Miranda Brand died unexpectedly, upending her California town, her son Theo asks former journalist Kate Aitken to create an archive of his mother's work. Miranda supposedly cracked under the strain of balancing work and family, but soon Kate must navigate nasty rumors about what really happened, her attraction to Theo, and her growing obsession with Miranda, fueled by her discovery of a diary that could explain everything. A debut that's starting to buzz.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.