Threats

January 16, 2012
David, a former dentist, receives a package containing the ashes of an unknown individual; later in the book, he encounters his wife, Franny, covered in blood, and he passes out. Thinking Franny has been murdered, afraid to leave his house and unable to piece together what is happening in his ruined life, David begins to lose his mind, a deterioration helped along by mysterious scraps of paper found throughout his house and the neighborhood bearing bizarre messages (“MY TRUTH WILL CAUSE ATOMIC SNOW UPON YOUR SWEET-SMELLING LAMBS AND CHILDREN”). In time, friends and strangers arrive, at random, with what David presumes to be nefarious intentions, and the unannounced comings and goings of ominous Det. Reginald Chico further unsettle David. David’s life becomes increasingly weird as he wanders his now unfamiliar home, struggling to tease out the details of his past life and whether his wife is dead with what little is left of his fractured mind. The book is a series of short, disjointed, and unchronological chapters. The story can seem labyrinthine at times, but the narrative arc acts as a clever reflection of David’s own developing mental illness. Gradually, as with any good detective novel, the pieces come together. What would have seemed gimmicky in the hands of a less skilled writer becomes a cunning whodunit with Gray (Museum of the Weird) at the reins. This is an innovative debut novel featuring a most unreliable (and compelling) narrator. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME Entertainment.

January 15, 2012
A man struggles to deal with the death of his wife and the odd messages that appear in her wake. Gray's debut novel--following two short-story collections (Museum of the Weird, 2010, etc.)--feels like an old-fashioned gothic tale as rewritten by David Lynch or William S. Burroughs; in her hands an unassuming Ohio town becomes a bottomless repository of strangeness and dread. The hero, David, is a disgraced former dentist who attracts police and media attention after his wife, Franny, is discovered dead in their home under unsettling circumstances: She suffered violent wounds, but David did nothing, staying with her corpse until the authorities arrived days later. David is clearly broken mentally, and he grows more paranoid as he discovers vaguely threatening messages on scraps of paper hidden around their home. (A typical one reads: "I will cross-stitch an image of your future home burning. I will hang this image over your bed while you sleep.") David's efforts to resolve the mystery involve a local cop, one of Franny's former co-workers and a regression therapist who happens to work out of David's garage. But resolution isn't really the point, nor is realism. This book is a mood piece about loss and the way the outside world becomes intimidating after an emotional anchor disappears. In that regard, it's often a very affecting and disturbing book: Gray regularly refers to wasps in the garage, Franny's ashes and a damp decaying house to evoke disorder and collapse, and her deliberately flat and unaffected sentences increase the tension. The book falters toward the end, as Gray tries to balance the oddness of her milieu with a sense of closure, making for a conclusion that doesn't feel ambiguous so much as unfinished. Still, a striking debut novel from a writer eager to shake domestic fiction out of its comfort zone.

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February 1, 2012
In two unconventional story collections (AM/PM, 2009; Museum of the Weird, 2010), Gray established herself as a chronicler of the bizarre and the banal, and her first novel proves she has stamina for the long form. David, a former dentist, believes his beautician wife, Franny, has died, though he's not sure how and can't quite process his feelings. To do so, he performs a series of menial tasks, such as applying Franny's skincare products, making coffee, and obsessing over the possibility that his doorknob might be electrically charged. When relentless detective Chico turns up, asking David questions he can't answer and introducing ineffectual officers and a suggestive shrink who only exacerbate David's confusion, David begins questioning his memories and reality itself. The only things that seem real to him are the vaguely terrifying, anonymous threats he finds around the house, which force him to reconfigure everything he knows about loss and marital love. Written in 77 brief, anecdotal chapters that accentuate Gray's wry, punchline humor, Threats is a comic success, part metaphysical detective story, part comedy of errors.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)