In the name of diversity, I usually don’t read a particular author twice. There are exceptions. I have read pretty much everything Anne Tyler, Armistead Maupin, and Anne Lamott have written, and occasionally find an author I want to read more of. In the past few years, Joshilyn Jackson, Alex Michaelides, and Alice Feeney have been repeats.
When you read an author more than once, you begin to see certain similarities in what they do. Writers have quirks and tend to repeat patterns and characterizations. Anne Tyler writes about quirky Baltimoreans, Taylor Jenkins Reid about show business types, and Harlan Coben about missing persons’ cases with a tech twist. Publishers like this, because readers often want to know what they are getting when they pick up a book. Brand authors sell more.
But are the books too similar? If you read enough, and closely together, it can seem that way. I have likened an author’s books to her children, slight variations on a genetic theme.
This week, I will look at two of Alice Feeney’s works and what they have in common. Are they siblings, cousins, or do they share no blood? Let’s examine…
1.
Adam and Amelia travel to Scotland at their therapist’s suggestion, an attempt to repair their ten-year marriage. When they discover their lodging is a fifth-century church, things get eerie. Amelia feels someone watching her. She gets trapped in a wine cellar. Adam, who is face blind, is crushing up pills and putting them into her drink.
The reader is also given intermittent letters from Amelia. Every year on their anniversary, she has written Adam a letter. Page after page, we see the slow deterioration of their union. Both come from troubled backgrounds: Adam’s loses his parents early and Amelia has no family. Amelia has gotten a life insurance policy out on Adam’s life so it’s possible she has the same designs her husband does. Just what is going on between these two?
2.
Amber is thirty-five, married to Paul, and is narrating the story from a coma. In flashbacks, we see the events that lead to the present: Amber met an old-flame, Edward, and had a one-night stand, after which she was struck by a car. Amber works at a radio call-in show for a difficult boss. She has a sister who visits occasionally.
The police discover a journal Amber wrote as a tween. She experienced the loss of both parents and eventually was adopted by a friend’s family. Taylor, her new sister, is a troubled child. Suspicion falls on her as the culprit behind the accident.
Similarities:
Both of these books are effectively creepy. They have characters – Amber and Adam – who are vulnerable due to their disabilities. Adam can’t recognize faces so there is the suggestion that he may be easily deceived. Comatose Amber is being visited in her hospital room by a silent figure who appears to be taunting her. Making a comatose woman aware of her surroundings plays on a common fear of being anesthetized.
Both use ephemera – letters and a journal, respectively – to fill the reader in on the big picture. We learn in the letters that Adam was being unfaithful and that their marriage was on the rocks. In the journal, Amber’s adoptive sister is a scary character who may have something to do with her accident.
Both feature characters who were orphaned, perhaps to underscore their susceptibility to manipulation.
Both narratives are genuinely surprising, which is a feat. Ever since Amy Dunne in Gone Girl, the reader knows that journals and letters can be unreliable. And, yet, Feeney uses them both in creative ways that are hard to see through.
Alice Feeney has developed an irresistable formula for creepy domestic suspense. I loved both of these stories. I will say, though, that she has a tendency to pile on coincidences towards the end, and there are maybe one too many twists.
Conclusion: much like the tenuous bond between Amber and Taylor, these books are similar but share no blood.
Books Smitten 