Captive
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
In the spirit of Emma Donoghue’s international bestseller Room, Captive throws readers into the mind of a woman who wakes to find herself in a terrifying and surreal situation: she’s confined to a small grey room and she has no idea why she’s there.
Emma has an unremarkable life, a mundane job, and very little contact with her family and friends. Night after night she drinks to forget until one evening she’s jolted out of her routine. She wakes up in a concrete room furnished with only a mattress and a ceiling lamp. Emma is seized by terror. She feels real emotion for the first time in a long time. She tries to make sense of what is happening to her, where she is, who has taken her, and why. As the days, weeks, and possibly months pass she develops a routine that helps her survive her circumstances. But just as Emma begins to find comfort in her routine she receives another terrifying jolt and she must adapt to new circumstances. Her mysterious captors subject her to various tests that push her to her limit and make her question everything about herself, including her will to survive.
Captive is a harrowing, suspenseful, and hypnotic debut about honesty and freedom and the importance of living meaningfully and truthfully.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Themes of humanity and love are not explored so much as dissected in this amoral fable, Dumont's confident debut novel. Emma, a depressed and isolated young woman, is well into her nightly routine of tequila, TV, and spiritual torpor when what at first seems to be a nightmare of intruders and a futile struggle ends with her waking up in a locked concrete chamber. Although she is drugged nightly, she soon realizes that she has become the subject of experiments by her unseen captors. A second prisoner later appears in her room. Julian is very different from Emma, and they can't agree on how to cope with being "lab rats." As each ordeal proves more inhumane than the last, they are drawn together against their common enemy. Moving between sensory overload and deprivation, Dumont maintains suspense throughout. Though the text does not revel in horror, this is not a novel for the weak-stomached. The simplicity of Dumont's phrasing, reflective of Emma's outlook, works well for a book of this length and style, A few particulars are underdeveloped the backstories of the main characters, the final twist but the world within their prison is stark and tense and makes for a satisfying page-turner.
