The Keep
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "Part horror tale, part mystery, part romance ... utterly fantastic.”—O, The Oprah Magazine • The bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad brilliantly conjures a world from which escape is impossible and where the keep—the tower, the last stand—is both everything worth protecting and the very thing that must be surrendered in order to survive.
Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe. In an environment of extreme paranoia, cut off from the outside world, the men reenact the signal event of their youth, with even more catastrophic results.
And as the full horror of their predicament unfolds, a prisoner, in jail for an unnamed crime, recounts an unforgettable story that seamlessly brings the crimes of the past and present into piercing relation.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan’s 2006 novel is a twisty, adventurous masterpiece of Gothic thrills. The story’s dual plot lines follow seemingly disparate scenarios: two cousins who reunite to turn a crumbling Eastern European castle into a an off-the-grid boutique hotel, and a teacher and student in a writing class in an American maximum security prison. Egan’s remarkable storytelling skills are on full display as she slowly reveals the terrible links between the two narratives—and weaves them together to form a single, unexpected thread. Suspenseful and layered, The Keep is the book equivalent of an M.C. Escher design—where “reality” is unnervingly changeable and the truth is whatever you want to believe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Claustrophobic paranoia, intentionally mediocre writing and a transparent gimmick dominate Egan's follow-up to Look at Me, centered on estranged cousins who reunite in Eastern Europe. Danny, a 36-year-old New York hipster who wears brown lipstick (and whose body can detect Wi-Fi availability), accepts his wealthy cousin Howard's invitation to come to Eastern Europe and help fix up the castle Howard plans on turning into a luxury Luddite hotel (check your cell at the door). In doing so, Danny can't help recalling the childhood prank he played on a young Howie that left the awkward adolescent nearly dead or so writes Ray, the druggie inmate who's penning this novel-within-a-novel for his prison writing workshop. Subsequent chapters alternate between Danny's fantastical castle travails (it's home to a caustic baroness bent on preserving her family seat) and Ray's prison drama. There are funny asides and trappings (particularly digital technology) along the way, and the sendup of castle narratives generates some chuckles. But the connection between the two narratives, which Egan reveals in intentionally tawdry fashion, feels telegraphed from the first chapter, making for a frustrating read.
