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mldias's review against another edition
5.0
This book transcends its constituent parts. It is more than a mystery, more than a forensic thriller or police procedural, more than a love story. It is a haunting character study, an exploration of origin and identity.
Lena Dawson is the rare first-person heroine with depth, who is written with such conviction and awareness that her development isn't encumbered by the first-person perspective. She is the lens through which we view a strange, seemingly disjointed flurry of events. Her world view is not like ours--she has constructed a past with which she can cope, drawing upon sensory experience and disjointed shards of memory.
Diana Abu-Jaber knows how to haunt a reader. She knows how to forge bonds between characters that are simultaneously poignant and realistic. It is quite a feat to write literature that is so innately personal without ever allowing it to become maudlin.
Lena Dawson is the rare first-person heroine with depth, who is written with such conviction and awareness that her development isn't encumbered by the first-person perspective. She is the lens through which we view a strange, seemingly disjointed flurry of events. Her world view is not like ours--she has constructed a past with which she can cope, drawing upon sensory experience and disjointed shards of memory.
Diana Abu-Jaber knows how to haunt a reader. She knows how to forge bonds between characters that are simultaneously poignant and realistic. It is quite a feat to write literature that is so innately personal without ever allowing it to become maudlin.
wsk56's review
4.0
I found this novel to be satisfying on several levels. It is a mystery surrounding a series of apparent SIDS deaths involving babies living near Syracuse, NY. The main character, Lena Dawson, is a fingerprint expert and supposedly intuitive about evidence, especially in cases involving children. As she helps investigate whether a baby killer is lurking around Syracuse, Lena is drawn into the mystery of her own beginnings. Taken in as a foster child by her parents as a very young child, she is haunted by memories of an ape mother comforting her before her rescue. Lena has many questions to investigate about the deaths of the babies and of her own history. The story did have a few flaws; but, overall I enjoyed the mystery and the characters.
slc54hiwi's review against another edition
3.0
Kind of gritty, but an interesting & detailed novel.
The main character's personality is quirky but believable. As she progresses through various crime investigations, she learns more about her past - including why she's always believed what's actually a false memory.
For those who think that CSI is real, this book would be a good dose of reality. That said, I didn't like it as much as her culinary memoir, but I liked it enough to seek out her other books.
The main character's personality is quirky but believable. As she progresses through various crime investigations, she learns more about her past - including why she's always believed what's actually a false memory.
For those who think that CSI is real, this book would be a good dose of reality. That said, I didn't like it as much as her culinary memoir, but I liked it enough to seek out her other books.
mrsfligs's review against another edition
4.0
Brief Description: Lena Dawson is a fingerprint specialist who has an odd gift for communicating almost telepathically with crime scenes. When a series of SIDS deaths strike an odd note within her, Lena feels compelled to look deeper into the cases. However, the more she explores, the more convinced she is that a serial killer of babies is on the loose and, odder yet, the killer seems to have a connection to Lena herself. As Lena investigates her past and the current crimes, she is drawn into the confusing web of her own past, including the stories told to her by her adoptive parents. As she confronts her own origins, Lena learns how the past has followed her into the present.
My Thoughts: Although the book description may sound like a straightforward mystery, it is anything but. The book had the strangest and most elusive tone to it. It is like a standard mystery was wrapped inside a cotton blanket and then pushed out through the fibers of the blanket into the book. Lena is aloof and distant from us as readers, and there is an almost dream-like feel to the book. Although I was almost convinced that Lena’s long-held and fantastical origin story about herself was true, Abu-Jaber is giving us cold hard reality but wrapping it up in a strange dream-like texture. This makes for an odd read. To this day, I’m not what to make of this book. It definitely isn’t your standard mystery in tone and feel. If you’re looking for a mystery with a literary and dream-like feel to it, this would be a good choice.
My Thoughts: Although the book description may sound like a straightforward mystery, it is anything but. The book had the strangest and most elusive tone to it. It is like a standard mystery was wrapped inside a cotton blanket and then pushed out through the fibers of the blanket into the book. Lena is aloof and distant from us as readers, and there is an almost dream-like feel to the book. Although I was almost convinced that Lena’s long-held and fantastical origin story about herself was true, Abu-Jaber is giving us cold hard reality but wrapping it up in a strange dream-like texture. This makes for an odd read. To this day, I’m not what to make of this book. It definitely isn’t your standard mystery in tone and feel. If you’re looking for a mystery with a literary and dream-like feel to it, this would be a good choice.
robynryle's review against another edition
Recommended to me by my friend Jenny, I found one of the premises of this book a little hard to swallow, and was glad it turned out not to be true in the end. I guess maybe she was aiming for more novel than mystery, as it fell short of many of the basic mystery type requirements. There were times when I got really tired of hearing all about the internal state of the narrator. You got the vague sense that you're supposed to believe something's wrong with her, but it was never clear to me what. For spending so much time inside her brain, I had little insight into what she was like or much feeling of identification with her. Maybe she's supposed to be weird, but that weird? Little disappointing.
nappower's review against another edition
4.0
liked this mysteryish/find the killer quite a lot though i thought it did go on for a bit long. the main character not only has to solve a string of infant murders but the mystery of her own parentage and beginnings. i adore abu-jaber's memoir, language of baklava, so i was glad to see her skillful fiction prose work. though i found her writing great, especially for this genre, i kept on mixing up the peripheral female characters in the book. also, every serial killer storyline reminds me of dexter. but that is neither here nor there.
leavingsealevel's review
2.0
I really wanted to like this - she's a local (NW) author, and I like atypical mysteries. But the writing was far too flowery for my mystery tastes, and a big chunk of the story line was implausible. Kid-raised-by-apes is hard to do well, I'm thinking. I should give one of Abu-Jaber's other more "serious" books a try, possibly.
lisaeirene's review against another edition
2.0
This book could have been good but it was just weird. The premise was strange about the origin of the main character (and I almost gave up reading because it was so dumb, but they pulled it together at the end), the characters were all weird...there was just a lot wrong with this book.
okenwillow's review against another edition
4.0
Origine est un thriller principalement axé sur la psychologie de la narratrice, Lena, une jeune femme à la personnalité complexe et torturée. Son personnage est particulièrement intéressant, elle nous plonge dans l’enquête de manière totalement immersive. Le style est excellent, l’écriture est fouillée, travaillée, le rythme peut surprendre, notamment lors des dialogues, très souvent entrecoupés par les réflexions personnelles de Lena. Ses impressions parsèment le récit, on pourrait presque qualifier ce thriller d’introspectif, bien que je n’aime pas trop ce mot. Le passé de Lena est pesant, ne connaissant pas ses origines et ayant nourri sa propre interprétation de ses rares souvenirs, elle a du se construire avec des lacunes et des zones d’ombres. Ses relations avec ses parents adoptifs sont ambigus, de même que celle avec son ex-mari. L’enquête sur laquelle sa profession l’amène à intervenir va la plonger dans le mystère de ses origines, la pousser à agir différemment, à remettre en question son rapport aux autres, à se découvrir.
L’intrigue elle-même est bien traitée, même si le suspens n’est plus à son comble assez vite, elle n’en reste pas moins passionnante, malgré l’importance du personnage de Lena et de son cheminement intérieur. Le final ne manque pas d’émotion, on empathise totalement avec Lena. Un thriller au rythme singulier, ni sanglant ni spectaculaire, mais tout en nuances et en humanité. Un excellent roman, intelligent et superbement écrit.
L’intrigue elle-même est bien traitée, même si le suspens n’est plus à son comble assez vite, elle n’en reste pas moins passionnante, malgré l’importance du personnage de Lena et de son cheminement intérieur. Le final ne manque pas d’émotion, on empathise totalement avec Lena. Un thriller au rythme singulier, ni sanglant ni spectaculaire, mais tout en nuances et en humanité. Un excellent roman, intelligent et superbement écrit.
snowmaiden's review against another edition
5.0
I don’t usually read this kind of novel, but last spring I read [b: Crescent|773454|Crescent|Diana Abu-Jaber|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348364325l/773454._SY75_.jpg|759505] by the same author, and since this was the only other book of hers our library owns, I decided to take a chance. This was much more than an ordinary thriller about a forensic expert. I identified very strongly with Lena, the eccentric protagonist. As she searches for a baby killer during a Syracuse winter and falls in love with a detective on the same case, Lena has to confront the realities of her own origins as an orphaned foster child. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.