Traps

by MacKenzie Bezos

The story of four very different women whose paths intersect--briefly, but significantly--in ways that will transform each of their lives forever: a propulsive reading experience that delivers the most abundant emotional satisfaction, in prose that is intelligent, nuanced, and riveting from first to last.

Dana is a beautiful young security guard trained in special ops who can disarm a bomb and perform emergency surgery but is terrified of commitment to the man she loves.  Jessica is an Oscar-winning actress whose father keeps selling her out to the paparazzi.  Vivian is a seventeen-year-old prostitute who will do anything to protect her twin babies.  Lynn is a recovering alcoholic living in isolation on a ranch in Nevada.  How their fates collide--and how that collision offers each of them a chance at redemption and renewal--is the subject of this emotionally powerful, finely crafted, richly textured novel.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Family, Drama

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Zarina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Traps has an utterly unengaging start and certainly didn't live up to the exciting choice I wanted my 125th book (my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal) of 2012 to be. If it weren't for the fact that I received this novel as a review copy I probably wouldn't even have bothered continuing on after a few chapters.

While the story of the four women central in the novel never truly becomes an interesting one for the reader it does get slightly better as story progresses. That is until the women predictably share the same pages towards the end as their stories intertwine. These scenes felt particularly forced and pointless and take away from any interest the reader has managed to build up in the individual characters.

I have a feeling Traps would've worked better if solely focused on just one or two of the women. As it were there was too little space for a proper back story for any of them to explain their motivations and relationships nor was there much character development throughout, leaving the story bland and unfinished.

A reluctant 2.5 stars.

[Rand · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sample sentences (note use of present tense, which is consistent throughout):

"A toilet flushing." (pg 8)
"Why don't you tell me the whole story, and I'll see if I can help you figure out how to set it right." (page 125)
"She has no critics, and still she feels ashamed." (pg 142)
"She checks her BlackBerry again in her pocket." (pg 157)

Chip Kidd's cover looks nice.

[BAM who is Beth Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

another really wonderful book with strong female characters. this time four, each with their own personal "traps" -- things that have held them back from truly living for a long time...each with hopes that things will get better.

over four days, we learn, briefly, their lives...and see them all heading down a path where they will all intertwine.

the story is a good one. i especially liked Vivian and Lynn...the story was a quieter, deeper one...but of course all four women had their pieces that fit into the well written narrative.

the only reason i don't give this 5 stars (i pondered over the rating for a while) is that i think that each story could have been developed a little bit better. perhaps a slightly longer novel would have brought the women from stories on a page to real and exciting characters. i felt, a bit, that the story was rushed....and tidied up a bit too quickly at the end.

that being said, this story was written beautifully...each woman's reflections were powerful and resonated with me...i really liked it.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bezos follows the trajectory of four women's lives over the course of four days. The novel opens with Dana, a security expert and volunteer EMT who is emotionally removed, even from her open and free-spirited boyfriend, Ian. Jessica is a famous actress hounded by the press, the public and an estranged father who, reminiscent of Jennifer Aniston's mother and Angelina Jolie's father, courts the press with claims that his daughter has abandoned family for fame. Vivian is a 17-year-old girl who is fleeing her pimp with her twin infants in tow. Lastly, Lynn, the most interesting of the quartet of characters, is a one-handed, recovering alcoholic who operates a dog rescue. Not surprisingly, these seemingly disparate women's lives intersect in the desert outside of Las Vegas.

Although some of these damaged characters had arresting back stories that emerge over a scant four days in this thin novel, the ending was formulaic and pat. The characters were also stock (e.g., the prostitute with the heart of gold who supported her children as best she could, the alcoholic filled with remorse for her inability to parent properly, etc.). Lynn declares, "Life is full of things that feel like traps. Our own weaknesses and mistakes. Unlucky accidents. The violence done to us by others. But they're not always what they seem." Bezo's characters are supremely unlucky, trapped in a relentlessly depressing novel that Bezos populates with pimps, child molesters, and flim flam men.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this has little to do with how I felt about the content of the book I would like to mention how wonderful it was to read a book that had thicker paper. So many of the books now have such thin paper that when turning the paper one often tears a small rip at the top or bottom of the page. This was a rather different book, a book about =four very diverse women, told in almost an emotionless tone, we learn about the character from what they do and who they associate with. So many books seem to be over written and over dramatizes, the author almost manipulating our feelings, that is was refreshing to read a book where the author has enough confidence in the reader to know they can figure it out.

All four of these women have had something bad happen to them, how they come together was easy to see in the beginning with a few of them but the last one really surprised me. The title has much meaning to this story as when Lynn says," Life is full of things that feel like traps. Our own weaknesses and mistakes. Unlucky accidents. The violence done to us by others. But they're not always what they seem. Sometimes later we see that they led us to where we needed to go." All these women are at a crosswords and they need to find out what will happen next.

This is a book where many will find it boring, slower paced, but I think that there are many readers out there that will find this novel as profound as I did.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written story about four women who think they are strangers, but they have connections to one another that become clearer as this slim novel moves through a few days of each of these ladies lives. The narrative weave is masterful, and several emotions are teased to the surface for both the characters and the reader. The theme throughout, however, is that life is full of things that feel like traps. Our weaknesses and mistakes. The violence done to us by others or ourselves, or that we may have done to others who have crossed our path. But things like that aren't always what they seem--a bad turn can sometimes take us to exactly the place that we need to go. Ultimately, maybe it's only ourselves we have to forget or forgive. I did a lot of cheering towards the end, and at least one fist pump. Please, treat yourself to this little gem.

[Delany · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good gawd. Started out slow, albeit well written. Got more depressing as it went along. No, thanks.

[Kathleen Flynn]

This author has an affinity for describing things in a very slow and meticulously detailed manner, which nearly drove me crazy at first, but I eventually began to understand why she was choosing to tell the story that way.

This wealth of description meant the book got off to a slow start for me and I nearly quit around the 10 percent mark, but for some reason I persisted and I am glad I did. It ended up being kind of moving, with the coincidences that linked the four women in this story improbable but at the same managing to not be hokey. Eventually I ended up rooting for all of them.

It is interesting as I think about this book, a day after finishing it, that there are no bad women in the story, while the male characters feel thinner and less convincing than the female ones. They are either cartoonishly evil or, if good, don't feel quite real.

[Reina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Again, I feel like I can't rate this book because I didn't finish. It was rather boring and the writing style made me feel really detached from the characters. I may pick it up from the library again but I doubt it.

Also, the beginning was very confusing with Dana, and completely unengaging.

[Patrice Hoffman · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Won through a Goodreads Giveaway*

It only took a few hours for me to finish this short novel by Mackenzie Bezos. The story of four women, and their paths intersecting only to leave profound changes after seemed like a recipe for a great chick-lit. Dana is a security guard who is trained to handle any situation. Jessica is an a-list celebrity who has issues with her father and chooses to live her life in the safety of her home without the paparrazi watchful eye. Lynn is a recovering alcoholic that resides on a pet rescue ranch in Nevada. Finally, Vivian, a seventeen year old mother of twins.

Bezos did a great job at describing what the lay of the land was in each scene that the characters were in. I wish that same attention to detail included the characters. They were paper-thin. Dana has committment issues. Jessica has trust issues. Lynn has coming to terms with her past issues. And any teenager with twins has a host of issues. The surface is never really broken in this novel. I wish that Bezos didn't box her self in with a four day time span that leaves more questions than answers in its wake.

In conclusion, I did not hate this novel. I just wish I had more past information about all the characters. There was no connection for me to any of the women because the book doesn't sufficiently tell us why or how they got to the points they were at in their lives. Although, the novel is well-written and I can see the connections that are made between circumstances that change your life forever and helps one to move on. I wish I could believe these characters were able to do that under the circumstances that they met each other.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will hand it to this book that it is well written, maybe a little clunky in places, but the descriptions are all there and all the actions flow well without seeming overly awkward. The only let down is that the book isn't very engaging.

The characters are plain, there's no real plot twists, everything is predictable, there's no main action or conflict.

If you're on the beach or just fancy a bit of light, fluffy reading this book is all good, if you're looking for something more serious you won't find it here.

The book focuses on 4 women and how over the course of 4 days their lives all cross. There's no big type of explosion and the book has a slow and steady pace throughout. It's easy to see how many people would find this book boring and I suppose you'd have to be into the slice of life type reading to fully appreciate this book and the message it puts across. It's not quite my cup of tea, but it is a book that I've turned to before for a bit of light reading between denser, heavier books.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book doesn't publish until March but I imagine it will get a lot of press given the pedigree. I was prepared to dismiss it, but, much to my surprise, and pleasure, I find a talented writer with a lovely story. In fact, Bezos ought to teach a class on setting the scene - her descriptive prose it superlative. The characters are rich and real, although slightly predictable, yes, and while they each have their struggles, they seem untouched by circumstance. Nevertheless, I was taken with each character and anxious to discover where it all arrived, and I think my only critique is that the book seemed much like a script, so I imagine a film will be coming soon. Worth the read and I will expect to see more from this writer who is highly skilled.
While I applaud her, seems unfair to be married to such an important man and also have so much talent to be published by Knopf.
Lucky MacKenzie.
A novel worthy of your time.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book but it didn't grip me. Each of the four main characters have an interesting story and the action takes place over four days so things happen quite quickly. At the start it is very hard to see how the four lives will be connected but gradually the links become apparent. As they are brought together they each have big decisions to make which will affect the rest of their lives. It starts very promisingly but I was expecting more from the end of the story. Somehow it seemed to end too soon without the big transforming event I was waiting for. I felt there was a satisfying build up in the story with some good writing but it needed a more dramatic ending. Maybe it is just me preferring a different style of book, but I felt this is a novel which doesn't quite live up to its potential.

[Miranda Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was chosen by my local bookclub for the next read. I was dubious that I would like it, but I did. There was a certain amount of intrigue as to how the four characters would interconnect and that drew me in.

I found the point of view a little distracting. It was omniscient, meaning that the story was narrated in a way that we, the readers, were observing it as it unfolded. There were a couple of instances where it even uses 'we' (such as 'we can see from how often she ...'), making this POV apparent. It keeps the reader at a distance from both the characters and the story in some ways, but at the same time it was like watching it in real time: we didn't know what was coming at all, there was no alluding to what would come, and we also didn't know the backstory of each of the characters so this unfolded before us, keeping the reader captivated and engaged.

We are introduced to the four characters, Jessica, Dana, Lynn, and Vivian, individually at the beginning of the book, and then we start to slowly see how they cross paths, or are connected to each other. Some of them are a surprise. In some ways we only get a snippet of their lives, just a moment as they intersect, never knowing the full outcome to their situations or the history behind them.

For me that was probably the only thing I felt lacked here. It felt too brief, and in some ways had little point, short of being a 'fly on the wall' with each one and observing the situation or dilemma they were facing at that time. Yet strangely I felt okay with this when it came to an end. I had engaged with each emotional moment and experienced it along with them, so that in itself provided a certain satisfaction.

This was a very different read for me, and a different style of writing. One that I felt had room for development and improvement.

[Abdoul Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

PHILOSOPHICAL READING OF TRAPS–a review
—-----
Traps. Four Women. Four Days. One Chance. (by Mackenzie Scott, formerly Bezos)
—----
Mackenzie Scott writes brilliantly, and I found this novel having a fundamental message at a deeper level. As a philosophical subtext, Traps invites the reader to look for existential themes in its 246 pages which chronicle the lives of four women on a quest to grapple with the enduring question of existence in the modern world. Among the prominent sub-textual motifs of the book are anguish, randomness, contingency, engagement, deliberateness, individuality, bad faith, authenticity, as well as liminality. The writer brings the lived realities of these women to the fore. Each of them gains an awareness of her existence and the need to transform her reality. The various moods that mark these inflexion points invite me to read this novel as a philosophical text. In my appreciation of the novel here, I shall draw attention only to a few motifs while making no comparison with other existentialist texts.
Dana is the first of the quartet of women we meet in the opening pages of the novel. She is a volunteer EMT. Her regular job is in security services. Nausea afflicts Dana, and her anxiety runs through the pages of the first chapter of the novel. Dana cannot temporarily make sense of the world around her. She feels a “pair of heavy phantom legs leaning against her own” in a bathroom in an “unmarked prefab building” in a “vast valley north of Los Angeles on a street of abandoned warehouses…” Despite her nausea, Dana is comfortable with her pregnancy as a lived experience. She believes that the world is a contingent place and agrees with Ian, her boyfriend, that “One thing will happen. And then another and another and another. And so on.” This casual statement reinforces the notion of contingency in their world and it foreshadows future events in the novel. Another existentialist streak of Dana is that she enjoys taking notes and enjoys shifting things in her bag. She does this purely out of choice, even though Ian considers it furtive and unsettling. An individual’s life experiences can be unbearable, which is an aspect of the problem of existence. In such circumstances, Dana derives pleasure from strange things and the absurdities of life. She tells Ian that she cherishes “[b]eing alone. Being in my own room alone… And sinking to the bottom of a pubic pool. Or here’s another weird one—being in a motel room. An empty, sterile, anonymous motel room.” Human beings create their own meaning, value and essence in the world by exercising their freedom to choose what projects they want to commit to. Death is another existential theme that overburdens Dana—fear of Ian’s death.
Jessica, an outstanding actress, introduces herself to the reader in the second chapter of the book. She lives six miles away from Dana’s with her husband, Akhil, and two daughters. Unlike Dana who does not find fulfilment in her romance with Ian, Jessica finds her partner who has Asian background quite the opposite. The threat to Jessica’s existence comes instead from her own father, who believes that her famous daughter has disowned him. It is for this reason that he has set the press, paparazzi, and the public up against her. Hence, Jessica never stops “wondering what people are thinking”. Jessica’s anxiety and alienation in everyday existence are intense. She has spent four years in her house anguishing about what people think about her. It is through this anguish that Jessica seeks passion and engagement in the unlikely project of retrieving her childhood puppy, Grace Kelly, from her father’s yard while he is in hospital. Jessica observes the actions of others and convinces herself that even though things can be imperfect, existence requires that people deal with their lived reality and experiences. To “get paralyzed or rush forward in a fog of generalized anxiety and confusion” is unhelpful. To Jessica, even the plant beside the door in her father’s yard is a “minor mystery” because dread has weighed her down. When the dog bites her, she believes the “object of her dread has taken shape”. Jessica has not been living her own truth, and she has confessed this to Akhil. She tells Dana, her security detail, that she wants to take her dog home. And even in this harmless act, she feels troubled by the fear that she has given Dana a “full peek into her deep well of irrational, emotional, tortured, contradictory, past- and future-bound secret needs”. Jessica only finds temporary happiness in simple things, like when Dana asks her to hold the dog “in place a second.” This is an act of bad faith.
Vivian is a seventeen-year-old lady. A pimp has forced her into prostitution. She flees her pimp with her young twins. Vivian becomes conscious of her reality and takes responsibility for her life. She is determined to redeem herself and assert her individuality despite the persistent pangs of the anguish and absurdity of her existence. A telling sign of her commitment to freeing herself from abuse is that she will draw Lynn’s pistol out on Marco, her abuser, to assert her authentic existence.
Lynn is an older woman, and she is the fourth and last in the quartet of women whose continuous search for meaning in the world through a commitment to personal renewal will see their paths eventually cross. She was an alcohol abuser but now runs a dog rescue. Lynn has a hand with metal hoops and she tells Vivian that she lost her hand in a farm accident. Lynn impresses upon Vivian that she has to take responsibility and exercise the power of choice in her existence. She tells Vivian that she has the final say, for example, when dealing with the dogs: “First thing is, you have to turn away when they do what you don’t want, and only pet them when they do what you like.’’ On day three, when the four women eventually meet, it turns out that Lynn is Jessica’s mother, Dana is Jessica’s security detail and Vivian is Lynn’s new friend. It is here that they have hard conversations. They all realise, as Lynn puts it in her statement, that captures the crisis of existence: “Life is full of things that feel like traps.”
Characters in an existential novel do not have to be propelled by motivation, have a lengthy backstory or develop /grow in the course of the entire novel. An existential novel differs from the traditional conception of the form of the novel. Traps chronicles largely the experiences of the characters as the world unfolds in front of them. The past of each character is part of who they are at the moment. Through each process of taking responsibility for their lives and becoming, they seek actively to transcend their tacticity. This may explain why the language of the novel is in the present tense.
By A. M. Savage

[Tim Roast · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Life is full of things that feel like traps. Our own weaknesses and mistakes. Unlucky accidents. The violence done to us by others. But they're not always what they seem. Sometimes later we see that they led us where we needed to go."

"Traps" follows four women. In chapter 1 we meet "our first hero", Dana, who is being confronted by a savage dog inside a locked vehicle as part of her training before she returns home to her nice, ordered home across the way from her messy boyfriend's place.

Chapter 2 is where we meet Jessica , an famous actor who is in hiding at home with her doctor husband and two girls, as she avoids answering her ringing phone.

In chapter 3 we meet the third woman, Vivian, a teenager forced to flee the red widow spider infested hovel home of her boyfriend, with her twin babies, and $14 in her pocket.

Chapter 4 is where the fourth woman, Lynn, is introduced. She runs a dog rescue centre and is advertising a vacancy after yet another of her "girls" leaves the role.

Having four separate introductions for me disrupted the flow of the book at the beginning, and the chapters also contain a lot of detailed description in them making them slow reading for me.

But after those chapters the disconnects become less and the stories converge, as each of the women confronts their traps, leading to a moving end for each of them.

Overall a book that gets more gripping as you get through it and would suit those who like emotional stories (4 for the price of one in fact).

[Brandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

*I received an advance copy of this book via Goodreads First Reads giveaways*

I wanted this book to be so much better than it was. It needs another solid revision or two. It starts very very slowly. I stuck with it because I thought maybe it would end up being more about the dogs. It did get better about halfway through, and the way the four stories came together at the end was smart and well thought-out. However, the four women did not seem to be treated equally important. In particular, I did not feel that Vivian's character developed much at all. Also, Dana's transformation seemed to happen all of a sudden. The stories of Jessica and Lynn, however, were very intriguing. I could see a novel just focused on those two with Vivian and Dana as supporting characters being very successful.

[T.E. Antonino · Rating 5 out of 5]

MacKenzie writes a riveting book centered on realistic people living through real-life situations. MacKenzie does a wonderful job with the descriptive and in-depth narration that is found throughout the book "Traps." I was very much pulled into the lives of the female characters she wrote about. Reading "Traps" was like having a real life peek into the hearts and souls of the various female characters she developed throughout the story. Books like this usually aren't on my reading radar, but I'm very happy to have discovered this book. It takes a lot of courage to take away all the hoopla from a story and get right down to the meat of a story. I'm glad Mackenzie stepped up to the plate and took a chance on a book like this. Happy reading!

[R.K. Syrus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why 5*? Is this The Great Gatsby? No. But if the author had decided to expand the work, its themes and characters could support a comparison to The Corrections. Also this work represents a significant advance over the previous work in technique and confidence.

The author's first published book featured a very intense emotional tracking first person pov. This work braves the (always perilous) third person present and features an expanded cast. In a shorter work making characters distinct without employing tropes is hard. That's done effectively in Traps.

Give it a few chapters and see if the propulsive narrative and pointed spare dialogue grab you!

[Mary Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere in Seattle lives a wise woman named Mackenzie Bezos and she is kind enough to write books for us. I was lucky enough to receive TRAPS in a goodreads giveaway. I just finished it. The characters are so fully developed and so gently revealed that I feel that I have met them and gotten to know them. Each has her own trap and each finds her way out. Their stories raise the age-old question: do we lead our lives or do our lives lead us. Highly recommend this to all.

[Esther Rabbit · Rating 5 out of 5]

How are MacKenzie's books not everywhere? The characters undergo a journey of growth and self-discovery throughout the entire book and if there's something I really love, it's character development. This was exquisite to read because the writer in me really enjoys descriptive scenes. I've read her other novel as well and they're both character driven featuring extremely complex individuals hidden in mundane settings.

[Connie Meyer-schultz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first capter was hard to read but after that it started to come together and was a good read.

[LisaMarie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a case of good descriptive detail that was somehow still boring? Couldn't stick with it.

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

liked. wonderful eye for detail---almost overload.

Dana is a beautiful young security guard trained in special ops who can disarm a bomb and perform emergency surgery but is terrified of commitment to the man she loves. Jessica is an Oscar-winning actress whose father keeps selling her out to the paparazzi. Vivian is a seventeen-year-old prostitute who will do anything to protect her twin babies. Lynn is a recovering alcoholic living in isolation on a ranch in Nevada. How their fates collide--and how that collision offers each of them a chance at redemption and renewal--is the subject of this emotionally powerful, finely crafted, richly textured novel.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read that Ms. Bezos was a talented writer, not trading on her ex husband’s name. This was a satisfying read. I was interested in the back story of the seemingly unconnected four main characters. Each had a believable explanation for who they were and why they behaved in the way they did. I appreciate the writing skill and the way the four threads wound in and out to move the story along. Really, one of the best written books i have read in some time.

[Lorrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are there 10 stars!!! I love, embrace, savor this read experience. I can absolutely now understand why Toni Morrison - even after she had stopped working as an editor and teacher - always made herself available to that young writer who had been her student and was soooo exceptional! She's MacKenzie Scott again now. And to know more about how she came to be such an empathetic, insightful author, here's last week's NY Times link.
The Fortunes of MacKenzie Scott https://nyti.ms/3DVZhsm

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay Jeff Bezos’ Ex, way to use that creative writing degree! I’ve been too generous with my stars so this is a five compared to those 4’s but honestly probably a 4 but there is some really great stuff in here about friendship and perseverance and the complicated ways our decisions and our undecided circumstances influence our lives. It is a quiet book over a short period of time where sort of ridiculous things happen but they seem plausible and it was tonally nice. I think you should read it!

[Linda Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was much better than I expected, given that the author was married to Jeff Bezos. Mackenzie is a talented author.

At first the story seemed a bit confusing. Four different women all with different issues. Then overlapping stories that weave together. The ending was a bit too neatly drawn to give it a 5* review, although it was satisfying.

[Louisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me until the second chapter to really get in to this book. I found it overly descriptive and because of that it was difficult to engage with. However once all four women had been introduced I found it more enjoyable to read. Overall I think it was a good book and have given it three stars

[Goon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a meh start. Difficult to be totally submerged in the book. The interesting parts come more toward the latter part of the book when you see how the life of four women come together. Her first book THE TESTING is better.