Lux

by Maria Flook

A searing, poignant, darkly comic novel set on Cape Cod by the author of the bestselling true crime story Invisible Eden .

Young Alden Warren's husband has vanished without a trace. Her daily routine -- working for the National Park Service at the Cape Cod National Seashore, volunteering to take care of a cantankerous old activist she met through Meals on Wheels, monitoring bird migration counts, and applying for a foster baby -- provides many distractions and obstacles, but she's got bigger troubles as Miss Bride Interrupted.

Alden is avidly courted but holds out emotionally -- until Lux Davis, a handsome landscape worker and her husbands undetected killer, tracks her down. Lux is smitten with Alden, but his immediate problem, unknown to her, is how to dispose of the body. Lux and Alden bond strongly in the face of their mutual demons, past and current, creating a charged and magical love story. In the meantime, his secret is on the verge of being discovered as the law closes in behind him.

Maria Flook finds valiant people within the working-class population of an off-season resort community. Although unsteady and disenfranchised, her characters emerge intact, buoyed by their love for one another and for the natural world, and portrayed by Flook with her signature mixture of high poetic seriousness and a ribald, picaresque sensibility ( The New Yorker ).

Genres: Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Maria Flook is the author of the novels Family Night (which received a PEN American/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Special Citation) and Open Water, as well as a collection of stories, You Have the Wrong Man, and a memoir, My Sister Life: The Story of My Sister's Disappearance. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The New Criterion, TriQuarterly, and More Magazine among others. She is a 2007 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award recipient, and is currently Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College in Boston. More information about Maria Flook can be found at www.mariaflook.net.

Reviews

[Natasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just... really, really wanted this book to be better.

The ending - okay, the ending, I had to reread 5 times. No joke. I was skimming/skipping just so I could finish, so I suppose I missed a few major parts, making the last paragraph REALLY confusing:

"Then, from the opposite shore, the gun erupted on schedule. Three blistering cracks.
The cormorants exploded off their perches like Fourth of July fireworks."

My first thought: What the hell are cormorants?
My second: DID SHE KILL OFF ALDEN AND LUX?!

So I grabbed my phone, looked up 'cormorants' and discovered they were birds. Thus, I found myself rereading the last chapter over and over.
Turns out, Alden works at Sea Call again and she's there to take inventory on the birds sitting on the powerlines. (If the shots are effectively scaring them off or not).

That's the ending? What the hell, indeed!
I wanted Lux to tell Alden he was the one who made Monty disappear. I wanted to see Alden's shock.
Unfair, unfair, unfair.

But it was well written; a very cryptic read, probably NOT for my age group (teens).

[Karrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, I can't believe I read this book all the way through. Really not that good. I don't even know what to say about the book, I can't remember the last time I read something so bad. It's been awhile. The characters were bizarre and the descriptions were not any better. Too much useless garbage was thrown in. If you don't live in that part of the country you don't understand half of what the author is writing about. Don't waste your time.

[Anastasia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't bother. The story is all over the place. The characters are all over the place. It's a confusing read and I felt like I was getting nothing from it. It kept seeming like I missed something and would think "oh their doing this now? Uh okay.." The book just jumps all over the place. Ha I guess that is the recurring theme "all over the place". The description makes it sound like it's going to be this great book. But I had to force myself to finish it.

[Melissa Francis · Rating 1 out of 5]

The plot really fell off in the end and i could have saved my time and not read this book. I dont know why she was sleeping with him or why she stole that baby since it seemed so unrealistic and I hate that he never wound up getting caught in the end even though he literally showed up to her house in her dead husbands coat

[Jennsie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to get into this book, but I just couldn’t get into it. The writing should have been edited, and it didn’t keep me engaged. It could have been better because the ideas are there.

[Dawne · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, I must say that I searched out this book because I know the writer, and I so loved her Cape Cod true crime book. I do not think I am overly biased in saying that the other reviews on this site - to be polite - do not do the book justice. Yes, it is an odd and lyrical book. One might even call it bizarre. It is also beautifully written, populated by fascinating, complex and unforgettable characters and set with the loving eye of a naturalist. In fact, it has earned a place in my fantasy seminar, which is as yet untitled but would call together post-modern picaresque novels whose anti-heroes are inclined towards environmentalterrorism. It would share a syllabus with Carl Hiassen and Edward Abbey. Yes, it is dark. And it's antagonist (or is he?) is named _Lux_. If you are a fan of thoughtful, quirky fiction, you might enjoy this novel.

[J. Ewbank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book by Flook is a very unusual one. Perhaps all of her novels are written this way. It involves two main characters, who are very flawed but whom one tries to enter into a relationship with the other. They both have pasts that play a part in the completion of the novel. If you want a novel that wraps up all the pieces in a nice bow you will not find it here. The characters are flawed and remain that way. I did enjoy the book.
J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"

[Louvaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another odd book, unsympathetic and vengeful. But gradually, you begin to see what makes them tick. It's basically a morality tale--everyone gets theirs in the end, but it has a funny way of getting there. The author has a way with unique phrasing: "he'd leave him to deal with an eternity like unbroken blisters." Overall, it's about strange people coming together. I like the odd cadences and weird rhythms of the book, and the beautiful descriptions of Cape Cod.

[Emily]

I did not like this book. It had horrible language. Not one of the characters in the book had redeemable lives. Strange story that I still don't quite get. It was in a clearance section of books at Albertson's. Now I see why.

[Nomanisan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is, as one of the judges on "So You Think You Can Dance" loves to say, one hot mess. There are plot lines and character facets running everywhere with no apparent connection, rationality, or resolution (much less logic). I tried to like it--I did; but oh, my goodness, what a disaster.

[Thomas McDade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Word-jacked me on page 7:

Alden often saw these baby plovers, tiny birds of speckled fluff racing in tight zigzags across the tidal flats. They pecked the foam necklace at the wrack line, chicks hardly bigger than the tufts on a chenille bedspread...

The beat went on.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the descriptions of the seashore and the Cape wildlife, but that's about it.

[Judi · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review:
http://mostlyfiction.com/contemp/floo...