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A Stranger Like You: A Novel
A taut and terrifying thriller about the lengths to which we'll go to make our dreams come true Hedda Chase is a top-flight executive producer at Gladiator Films, fast-tracked in the business since she graduated from Yale. An aggressive businesswoman, she recently pulled the plug on a film project initiated by one of her predecessors. The screenwriter on the project was Hugh Waters, a wannabe with a dead-end marriage and a day job at an insurance company. This script was his ticket out-until Hedda tampered with his plans, claiming his violence was over the top, his premise not credible, and his ending implausible. Hugh decides to prove otherwise by staging his script's ending and casting Hedda Chase as the victim. He flies to Los Angeles and finds Hedda, kidnaps her, and locks her in the trunk of her vintage BMW in the parking lot at LAX. He leaves the keys in the ignition, the parking ticket on the dash, and lets "destiny" take its course. This is the set-up for a troubling, smart, deadly look at women and images of women, at media as a high-stakes game and the selling of a war as theatre. (One key character is an Iraq veteran, and one of Hedda's projects is a film about women in Iraq). Brundage's Los Angeles is a casual battleground that trades carelessly in lives and dreams. As always, her characters are complicated, surprising, and intense in this high velocity, provocative novel.Watch a Video
274 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
73 people are currently reading
778 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Brundage
9 books502 followersELIZABETH BRUNDAGE is the author of five novels including The Vanishing Point and All Things Cease to Appear which was a WSJ Best Mystery of 2016, a NY Times Editor's Choice, and the basis for the Netflix movie Things Heard and Seen. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she received a James Michener Award, and attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Witness, New Letters, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. She has taught at Skidmore College, Bard's Simon's Rock College, Florida Atlantic University, Trinity College, the University of Hartford, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. She lives with her family in Albany, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 149 reviews
August 12, 2010
Early on in A Stranger Like You, one character asks another what kind of person can create characters who are absolute monsters. The idea is that someone who can write about a fictional person committing atrocious acts is also very capable of committing those same acts as well. With that in mind I'm a little hesitant to put my opinion out on the internet, but since I won a First Reads copy, here goes nothing. If I disappear in the near future consider this your official lead. :-)
The character who asks the aforementioned question, Hedda Chase, is a Hollywood producer who "un-green light's" the screenplay of one seriously deranged dude. As a partial explanation she says that people don't really want gratuitous sex and violence in their movies, but that that is all that Hollywood is putting before them so they're taking what they're given. And that's exactly how I feel. I like thrillers and love stories as much as the next person, but it has to advance the plot. And I cannot stand characters who are evil just because the plot calls for them to be. And that's all there is here. Dark scene after dark scene, getting progressively more and more unpleasant to read. If I hadn't felt obligated to finish I wouldn't have read more than a handful of chapters.
There is not a single character to root for in the entire book. They're all either completely despicable or just too bland to be cared about. Brundage's attempts at humanizing the antagonist only serve to make him more heinous as a person and the book that much more unpleasant to read.
The time line is not chronological, which is pretty confusing, especially since at the first it also switches to second person. And let's be honest, second person is really only good for choose-your-own-adventure books. Especially since it takes a while to figure out who "you" are. The messed up time line didn't add anything to the story either, except to advance it's political agenda - and I for one do NOT read novels for propaganda. If I want to hear your message, you better write some good non-fiction because that crap does not belong in my pleasure reading.
To be fair, the writing itself is very good from a more technical point of view. However, good writing can't make up for the utter lack of enjoyment of what you're reading.
If you're into torture porn like the Saw movies, you'll probably really enjoy this one. To the more "normal" cross-section of society, I say stay far, far away.
The character who asks the aforementioned question, Hedda Chase, is a Hollywood producer who "un-green light's" the screenplay of one seriously deranged dude. As a partial explanation she says that people don't really want gratuitous sex and violence in their movies, but that that is all that Hollywood is putting before them so they're taking what they're given. And that's exactly how I feel. I like thrillers and love stories as much as the next person, but it has to advance the plot. And I cannot stand characters who are evil just because the plot calls for them to be. And that's all there is here. Dark scene after dark scene, getting progressively more and more unpleasant to read. If I hadn't felt obligated to finish I wouldn't have read more than a handful of chapters.
There is not a single character to root for in the entire book. They're all either completely despicable or just too bland to be cared about. Brundage's attempts at humanizing the antagonist only serve to make him more heinous as a person and the book that much more unpleasant to read.
The time line is not chronological, which is pretty confusing, especially since at the first it also switches to second person. And let's be honest, second person is really only good for choose-your-own-adventure books. Especially since it takes a while to figure out who "you" are. The messed up time line didn't add anything to the story either, except to advance it's political agenda - and I for one do NOT read novels for propaganda. If I want to hear your message, you better write some good non-fiction because that crap does not belong in my pleasure reading.
To be fair, the writing itself is very good from a more technical point of view. However, good writing can't make up for the utter lack of enjoyment of what you're reading.
If you're into torture porn like the Saw movies, you'll probably really enjoy this one. To the more "normal" cross-section of society, I say stay far, far away.
February 27, 2016
This is a crime novel that I'd happily recommend to anyone . . . while at the same time warning them that they might very well not like it. Brundage switches from one viewpoint character to another throughout her tale, which is constructed as if almost a collection of novellas; she also uses several different narrative styles, from quasi-hardboiled third-person straightforward past-tense to second-person present-tense hifalutin. Call this sort of narrative ostentation pretentious if you like but, me, I like a good dose of pretentiousness and, by the time I neared the novel's end, the pages were turning as rapidly as if I were reading Michael Connelly or Val McDermid.
Hugh Waters is an unhappily married closet-bisexual insurance guy in New Jersey who has managed to sell to a Hollywood studio his screenplay for a thriller about a fellow who locks a woman in the trunk of his car, then leaves the car at an airport long-term parking lot. But the studio producer who bought the script has died and been replaced by newcomer Hedda Chase, who loathed Hugh's script and canned the project. So Hugh comes out to Hollywood to confront Hedda face-to-face and teach her a lesson -- drugging her, putting her into the trunk of her own car, and leaving said car in the airport parking lot.
Trouble is, just like in Hugh's script, the car is then stolen by a petty criminal who doesn't realize there's someone in the trunk -- in fact, by semi-crippled Iraq vet Denny, guilty of war crimes but not so guilty as some of his comrades. It takes a while for Denny and his picked-up girlfriend Daisy to realize they have, as it were, a clandestine passenger. The question then becomes -- rather, one of the questions becomes -- what will Denny, who's no stranger to gratuitous killing, do about this situation?
I completely admire Brundage's attempt to use a virtuoso array of narrative styles in the telling of her tale, and for the most part I bought it. At the same time, she didn't quite pull it off -- not quite. I groaned every time I came across a "lay"/"lie" illiteracy; more importantly, Brundage, like so many of her contemporaries, is incompetent in the use of the various past tenses while narrating in the present tense. It's not that bloody difficult, frankly, and it really interferes with the smoothness of the reading when a writer gets it wrong -- even when the reader doesn't realize why the narrative seems to hiccup.
Neither of those two is a major complaint (well, the second is, a bit), and like a gweat big gwown-up boy I was able to get past them both. As I say, I loved the way that Brundage's shifts of viewpoint and narrative voice kept throwing me off-balance. If you have a great tale to tell -- as Brundage has here -- this is the kind of way you ought to risk telling it. Readers who shy away from rollercoasters because of the risk factor probably won't like the book; others might.
Hugh Waters is an unhappily married closet-bisexual insurance guy in New Jersey who has managed to sell to a Hollywood studio his screenplay for a thriller about a fellow who locks a woman in the trunk of his car, then leaves the car at an airport long-term parking lot. But the studio producer who bought the script has died and been replaced by newcomer Hedda Chase, who loathed Hugh's script and canned the project. So Hugh comes out to Hollywood to confront Hedda face-to-face and teach her a lesson -- drugging her, putting her into the trunk of her own car, and leaving said car in the airport parking lot.
Trouble is, just like in Hugh's script, the car is then stolen by a petty criminal who doesn't realize there's someone in the trunk -- in fact, by semi-crippled Iraq vet Denny, guilty of war crimes but not so guilty as some of his comrades. It takes a while for Denny and his picked-up girlfriend Daisy to realize they have, as it were, a clandestine passenger. The question then becomes -- rather, one of the questions becomes -- what will Denny, who's no stranger to gratuitous killing, do about this situation?
I completely admire Brundage's attempt to use a virtuoso array of narrative styles in the telling of her tale, and for the most part I bought it. At the same time, she didn't quite pull it off -- not quite. I groaned every time I came across a "lay"/"lie" illiteracy; more importantly, Brundage, like so many of her contemporaries, is incompetent in the use of the various past tenses while narrating in the present tense. It's not that bloody difficult, frankly, and it really interferes with the smoothness of the reading when a writer gets it wrong -- even when the reader doesn't realize why the narrative seems to hiccup.
Neither of those two is a major complaint (well, the second is, a bit), and like a gweat big gwown-up boy I was able to get past them both. As I say, I loved the way that Brundage's shifts of viewpoint and narrative voice kept throwing me off-balance. If you have a great tale to tell -- as Brundage has here -- this is the kind of way you ought to risk telling it. Readers who shy away from rollercoasters because of the risk factor probably won't like the book; others might.
August 14, 2011
Hugh is very upset when he finds out the Hollywood screen play which had been accepted has now been withdrawn by a new executive, Hedda Chase. He flies to Los Angeles; stalks Hedda; ties her up and puts her in the trunk of her car (she claims it was trite and the person would have escaped under the same circumstances in his screenplay); and leaves the car parked under a light with the keys on the seat at the Los Angeles airport. There are then a couple of chapters about Hugh's stay in Los Angeles. Part II goes back to before the abduction, but it was confusing at first because it still describes what Hugh is doing and then brings in Hedda (I wasn't sure at first if she had escaped). Among the other characters are an Iraqi exchange student, Daisy, a young girl living on her own who plays the harmonica, and Denny, an Iraq veteran with combat stress. We don't find out what happened to Hedda until the finale, Part 5.
July 26, 2013
I picked up this book 2 years ago and just recently picked it back up to finish. GOOD LORD I wish I had finished this sooner. Once I started up again I could not stop. This book is definitely worth a read.
March 18, 2013
The Strangers Among Us: Three by Elizabeth Brundage
The Doctor’s Wife (Plume, 2005)
Somebody Else’s Daughter (Plume, 2009)
A Stranger Like You (Plume, 2011)
There are many things to praise about Elizabeth Brundage’s novels. She tackles controversial topics innovatively through the interplay of highly drawn-out characters; she is in command of the language––the reader is never jerked out of the story by a wrong word or confusing image; and her plotting keeps the reader’s interest to the last paragraph. But there is also much to discuss in these novels.
Using fiction for political ends is a risky business. In The Doctor’s Wife, Brundage attacks fundamentalist anti-abortionists. In A Stranger Like You, she goes after Hollywood’s treatment of women. Her agenda in Somebody Else’s Daughter is less in your face; hence in my opinion, it’s the best of the three.
Each of Brundage’s stories is told through multiple characters. In The Doctor’s Wife, the main characters are Annie Knowles, who is married to Michael, a doctor who decides to spend the little free time he has working in an abortion clinic run by a former lover, Simon Haas, an artist who seduces Annie, and Simon's wife Lydia, the most complex character in the story. Lydia is Marilyn Monroe had she run away with an artist instead of been discovered by Hollywood. A natural beauty, Lydia falls in with a group of fundamentalists who kidnap Michael with the intent of killing him in retribution for his murder of fetuses.
I have several problems with Lydia, starting with the idea that she could run off at age 14. Lydia had been living in Fulton County in upstate New York, with her father who was dying of cancer. Simon Haas, a 36-year old art student, discovers her on a trip searching for subjects to paint. When Lydia’s father dies, Haas has no trouble spiriting her off to New York City, as if the officials at her school and the county department of social services would ignore her disappearance. In a conflicting, but necessary twist Haas continues to pay the electric bill on her family's dilapidated house, which means public agencies could have tracked him down.
Haas becomes a famous artist by virtue of his nude paintings of Lydia. His fame eventually gets him a teaching job at a Catholic college in Albany, New York––the college where Annie, an iconoclastic journalist who has written an article on late-term abortion that got the attention of the anti-abortion community, teaches English. Haas is a rake and Lydia, who feels guilty about Haas having arranged an abortion after she’d been impregnated by a community agency employee before he met her, appears unable to become pregnant. That is the backdrop to Haas’ seduction of Annie and Lydia’s participation in the attack on Dr. Knowles.
In A Stranger Like You, Brundage rakes Hollywood for its treatment of women. The story is told through two characters, Hedda Chase, a Jewish Ivy-leaguer who becomes a producer at a large Hollywood studio and Hugh Waters, a would-be screen writer whose previously purchased script is killed by Chase.
Chase––the heroine of A Stranger Like You––bucks the system by remaining single, despite fighting loneliness, and by producing a movie that tells the story of a woman who is stoned to death in Iraq on the dubious grounds that she spent several days trapped with an American soldier in a bomb ruin. Waters is the wild card––an outsider who fits into the alienated male-dominated Hollywood culture despite or maybe because of being a sociopath.
Readers who are sympathetic to Brundage’s portrait of Hollywood may not quail at her Hugh Waters villain. Anyone living in contemporary America is likely to accept Waters as yet another example of the dangerous male murderer––the stranger next door. Unlike his New Jersey insurance company colleagues, Waters hopes to be something more than a 9 to 5 desk jockey. Isn’t that a good thing? Yet, when his dreams are interrupted, we’re asked to believe he has no trouble becoming a cold-blooded killer.
Somebody Else’s Daughter is the most successful of Brundage’s three novels in large part because her treatment of social issues––drugs, pornography, sexual deviancy, adultery, et al––don’t overwhelm her characters as the issue of abortion overwhelms the characters in The Doctor’s Wife and the treatment of women by Hollywood overwhelms A Stranger Like You.
My biggest problem with Somebody Else’s Daughter is the 10-page unlabeled initial section of the book which some readers in my book club didn’t realize until I had pointed it out was a letter written by one of the main characters at the moment of giving up his daughter for adoption. Brundage uses the technique of confusing the reader with content at the beginning of all three books. Although Lydia’s internal dialogue at the beginning of The Doctor’s Wife actually occurs after the story ends, the foreshadowing is largely lost. A Stranger Like You begins with a page of Hollywood story themes: “Greed leads to destruction; lust leads to obsession; love leads to happiness…” repeated over an over to the bottom of the page. This criticism of the formulaic approach to movie making is both obscure and off-putting.
When a writer has an ulterior motive to writing a novel, it is hard to avoid creating stereotypical characters. To Brundage’s credit her villains are not stick figures, although the sadistic murderer in Somebody Else’s Daughter comes close. Brundage allows her bias against those she doesn't agree with turn them into villains. In the first two books, rural white fundamentalists are cruel and criminal. Brundage takes her disdain for fundamentalists one step beyond historical evidence, suggesting a group could act in unison to commit a murder. Individuals have done terrible things, but I don't know of a situation where a minister has convinced a group to engage in such acts.
In the final analysis this reader didn’t buy either Lydia Haas or Hugh Waters. In Lydia’s case it was her decision to save Michael Knowles while killing a homeless man in his stead that didn’t work for me. Waters’ unformulated plan to show Chase that the ending to his script was plausible requires the reader to accept the idea that his man has become unglued by the canceling of his movie contract. Both stretches are essential and neither worked for me. I give her credit, however, for trying and for coming close.
Also worth noting is Brundage’s treatment of her protagonists. There are no heroes in The Doctor’s Wife. Annie gives herself to Simon Haas when neglected by her doctor husband, who puts his family last on his list of priorities. Somebody Else’s Daughter has several good guys while in A Stranger Like Me, Hedda is clearly the hero––as it is she who in the end dispatches the villain.
Finally, Brundage deserves praise for her treatment of Jews and Judaism. In Somebody Else’s Daughter she describes a character’s moral conversion during a Yom Kippur service and in A Stranger Like You, Hedda Chase is forced to come to terms with her having abandoned her upbringing. Both treatments are presented in a sensitive and compelling manner.
There is much to praise in these novels. Even where she comes up short, Brundage pushes against the boundaries of modern culture, asking her characters to confront the implications of their decisions and behavior. Let’s see whom she goes after next.
The Doctor’s Wife (Plume, 2005)
Somebody Else’s Daughter (Plume, 2009)
A Stranger Like You (Plume, 2011)
There are many things to praise about Elizabeth Brundage’s novels. She tackles controversial topics innovatively through the interplay of highly drawn-out characters; she is in command of the language––the reader is never jerked out of the story by a wrong word or confusing image; and her plotting keeps the reader’s interest to the last paragraph. But there is also much to discuss in these novels.
Using fiction for political ends is a risky business. In The Doctor’s Wife, Brundage attacks fundamentalist anti-abortionists. In A Stranger Like You, she goes after Hollywood’s treatment of women. Her agenda in Somebody Else’s Daughter is less in your face; hence in my opinion, it’s the best of the three.
Each of Brundage’s stories is told through multiple characters. In The Doctor’s Wife, the main characters are Annie Knowles, who is married to Michael, a doctor who decides to spend the little free time he has working in an abortion clinic run by a former lover, Simon Haas, an artist who seduces Annie, and Simon's wife Lydia, the most complex character in the story. Lydia is Marilyn Monroe had she run away with an artist instead of been discovered by Hollywood. A natural beauty, Lydia falls in with a group of fundamentalists who kidnap Michael with the intent of killing him in retribution for his murder of fetuses.
I have several problems with Lydia, starting with the idea that she could run off at age 14. Lydia had been living in Fulton County in upstate New York, with her father who was dying of cancer. Simon Haas, a 36-year old art student, discovers her on a trip searching for subjects to paint. When Lydia’s father dies, Haas has no trouble spiriting her off to New York City, as if the officials at her school and the county department of social services would ignore her disappearance. In a conflicting, but necessary twist Haas continues to pay the electric bill on her family's dilapidated house, which means public agencies could have tracked him down.
Haas becomes a famous artist by virtue of his nude paintings of Lydia. His fame eventually gets him a teaching job at a Catholic college in Albany, New York––the college where Annie, an iconoclastic journalist who has written an article on late-term abortion that got the attention of the anti-abortion community, teaches English. Haas is a rake and Lydia, who feels guilty about Haas having arranged an abortion after she’d been impregnated by a community agency employee before he met her, appears unable to become pregnant. That is the backdrop to Haas’ seduction of Annie and Lydia’s participation in the attack on Dr. Knowles.
In A Stranger Like You, Brundage rakes Hollywood for its treatment of women. The story is told through two characters, Hedda Chase, a Jewish Ivy-leaguer who becomes a producer at a large Hollywood studio and Hugh Waters, a would-be screen writer whose previously purchased script is killed by Chase.
Chase––the heroine of A Stranger Like You––bucks the system by remaining single, despite fighting loneliness, and by producing a movie that tells the story of a woman who is stoned to death in Iraq on the dubious grounds that she spent several days trapped with an American soldier in a bomb ruin. Waters is the wild card––an outsider who fits into the alienated male-dominated Hollywood culture despite or maybe because of being a sociopath.
Readers who are sympathetic to Brundage’s portrait of Hollywood may not quail at her Hugh Waters villain. Anyone living in contemporary America is likely to accept Waters as yet another example of the dangerous male murderer––the stranger next door. Unlike his New Jersey insurance company colleagues, Waters hopes to be something more than a 9 to 5 desk jockey. Isn’t that a good thing? Yet, when his dreams are interrupted, we’re asked to believe he has no trouble becoming a cold-blooded killer.
Somebody Else’s Daughter is the most successful of Brundage’s three novels in large part because her treatment of social issues––drugs, pornography, sexual deviancy, adultery, et al––don’t overwhelm her characters as the issue of abortion overwhelms the characters in The Doctor’s Wife and the treatment of women by Hollywood overwhelms A Stranger Like You.
My biggest problem with Somebody Else’s Daughter is the 10-page unlabeled initial section of the book which some readers in my book club didn’t realize until I had pointed it out was a letter written by one of the main characters at the moment of giving up his daughter for adoption. Brundage uses the technique of confusing the reader with content at the beginning of all three books. Although Lydia’s internal dialogue at the beginning of The Doctor’s Wife actually occurs after the story ends, the foreshadowing is largely lost. A Stranger Like You begins with a page of Hollywood story themes: “Greed leads to destruction; lust leads to obsession; love leads to happiness…” repeated over an over to the bottom of the page. This criticism of the formulaic approach to movie making is both obscure and off-putting.
When a writer has an ulterior motive to writing a novel, it is hard to avoid creating stereotypical characters. To Brundage’s credit her villains are not stick figures, although the sadistic murderer in Somebody Else’s Daughter comes close. Brundage allows her bias against those she doesn't agree with turn them into villains. In the first two books, rural white fundamentalists are cruel and criminal. Brundage takes her disdain for fundamentalists one step beyond historical evidence, suggesting a group could act in unison to commit a murder. Individuals have done terrible things, but I don't know of a situation where a minister has convinced a group to engage in such acts.
In the final analysis this reader didn’t buy either Lydia Haas or Hugh Waters. In Lydia’s case it was her decision to save Michael Knowles while killing a homeless man in his stead that didn’t work for me. Waters’ unformulated plan to show Chase that the ending to his script was plausible requires the reader to accept the idea that his man has become unglued by the canceling of his movie contract. Both stretches are essential and neither worked for me. I give her credit, however, for trying and for coming close.
Also worth noting is Brundage’s treatment of her protagonists. There are no heroes in The Doctor’s Wife. Annie gives herself to Simon Haas when neglected by her doctor husband, who puts his family last on his list of priorities. Somebody Else’s Daughter has several good guys while in A Stranger Like Me, Hedda is clearly the hero––as it is she who in the end dispatches the villain.
Finally, Brundage deserves praise for her treatment of Jews and Judaism. In Somebody Else’s Daughter she describes a character’s moral conversion during a Yom Kippur service and in A Stranger Like You, Hedda Chase is forced to come to terms with her having abandoned her upbringing. Both treatments are presented in a sensitive and compelling manner.
There is much to praise in these novels. Even where she comes up short, Brundage pushes against the boundaries of modern culture, asking her characters to confront the implications of their decisions and behavior. Let’s see whom she goes after next.
January 16, 2016
It all starts with a Premise!!
Hugh Waters was so excited that he had sold his script. His whole life was about to change. Then a new person was put in charge so the contract was canceled. He believed the new person, Hedda Chase, was wrong when she said "NO!" to his project. So Hugh jumped on a plane to Los Angeles just to talk to her, make her see the script was good.
The conversation didn't go as planned when she declared his story unbelievable. Stressed to a breaking point, Hugh decided to reenact the terrifying ending using Miss Chase as the victim. Now her life hangs in the balance when Hugh plan takes an unplanned turn.
This is story about how far someone may go to fulfill his dreams. Set in the high pressure of life in Hollywood, it is a scary look at just how quickly things can go wrong. I would characterize the story as more intense psychological story than as a thriller.
The characters are uniquely fit together, sometimes at too much of a coincidence to ring true, but the characters themselves are believable with their many faults. Hugh is bored with his life, including both his job and his marriage. I felt sorry for his wife. The character of Hedda Chase is very unlikable so it takes a little work on the part of the reader to become concerned about her fate. The homeless girl showing up at weird times and places gave me pause. Bringing in a character, Denny, an Iraqi war vet adds a sense of current events to the story, but again his actions were confusing at times.
With all that said I did enjoy the book, it just was not what I expected. It was much more psychological as first Hugh definitely suffers a break from reality but it seems all the other characters do as well. This turns into a character study set off by one event that connects it each character to the others.
The way the story itself was written was the part that made it interesting, as it was told from the points of view of three different people and we actually got to read what was in their minds, what they were thinking. To me this saved the book. The characters were well written the plot just seemed forced and contrived.
This is the first book I have read by this author and understand her past novel, The Doctor's Wife, was very successful and received excellent reviews so I will probably add it to my wish list. This one was just a bit off the mark for me.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Plume Books, A Division of The Penguin Group. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission 19s 16 CFR, Part 255 : 1CGuides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. 1D
Hugh Waters was so excited that he had sold his script. His whole life was about to change. Then a new person was put in charge so the contract was canceled. He believed the new person, Hedda Chase, was wrong when she said "NO!" to his project. So Hugh jumped on a plane to Los Angeles just to talk to her, make her see the script was good.
The conversation didn't go as planned when she declared his story unbelievable. Stressed to a breaking point, Hugh decided to reenact the terrifying ending using Miss Chase as the victim. Now her life hangs in the balance when Hugh plan takes an unplanned turn.
This is story about how far someone may go to fulfill his dreams. Set in the high pressure of life in Hollywood, it is a scary look at just how quickly things can go wrong. I would characterize the story as more intense psychological story than as a thriller.
The characters are uniquely fit together, sometimes at too much of a coincidence to ring true, but the characters themselves are believable with their many faults. Hugh is bored with his life, including both his job and his marriage. I felt sorry for his wife. The character of Hedda Chase is very unlikable so it takes a little work on the part of the reader to become concerned about her fate. The homeless girl showing up at weird times and places gave me pause. Bringing in a character, Denny, an Iraqi war vet adds a sense of current events to the story, but again his actions were confusing at times.
With all that said I did enjoy the book, it just was not what I expected. It was much more psychological as first Hugh definitely suffers a break from reality but it seems all the other characters do as well. This turns into a character study set off by one event that connects it each character to the others.
The way the story itself was written was the part that made it interesting, as it was told from the points of view of three different people and we actually got to read what was in their minds, what they were thinking. To me this saved the book. The characters were well written the plot just seemed forced and contrived.
This is the first book I have read by this author and understand her past novel, The Doctor's Wife, was very successful and received excellent reviews so I will probably add it to my wish list. This one was just a bit off the mark for me.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Plume Books, A Division of The Penguin Group. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission 19s 16 CFR, Part 255 : 1CGuides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. 1D
September 20, 2011
***SPOILERS GALORE***
Sorry to say this was my least favorite of Brundage’s books ☹ It was disappointing for me, since her other 2 books make my favorite list! This was “too Hollywood” and not believable ~ much like Hugh’s script ‘The Adjuster”… (maybe that was the point?....hmmm)
Part 1 (Hugh’s voice) was good (not great)- However, as soon as Part Two arrived I quickly lost interest, didn’t really care how Hedda bought her car, and her relationship with Tom (bla, bla) etc.. Denny, Daisy (and her little rat) raised my interest but not enough. Like Jodi Picoult, Brundage usually does switch points of view, but I did not like it this time. It aggravated me.
Unfortunately, I was so disgruntled with the middle that the so-called thrilling finale, just didn’t thrill me. I could believe the actions Hugh took when he kidnapped Hedda to prove his ending but then when he puts Bruno in the airport all tied up & beats up Tom– nope- not buying it.
I did love the way Brundage describes the scenes of LA/Hollywood from the view of Hugh. I spent some time in these circles Hugh describes and I felt similarly not being in “the industry” and from a small town. The parties and people were surreal. It was nice to visit that again.
…..(page 9) “At this party people looked at him with curiosity, as if they were wondering who he was or what he did or what he’d done, and, because there was always the possibility that he was someone important- more important, perhaps, than a few of the other guests, - they smiled at him with interest, as if knowing him might be good for them.”
Brundage’s attempt to incorporate many issues was appreciated but did not succeed~how far will one go to make dreams come true to escape his dead end life? ~Hollywood idiosyncrasies ~ Iraq war & damaged veterans & women (Fatima) ~messed up relationships --- too many things ..not tied up very well.
One main problem is I didn’t ‘like’ or care about one character in this book. There was no one to root for. This book does not qualify as a “thriller”-but the story could be a thrilling movie …(like all of Brundage’s books).……….And poor poor Marion….I sincerely felt bad for that wife….talk about your husband going through a midlife crisis!!! ( I guess I liked her)
Oh & the ending - Come on!! "There's something beautiful about a woman making her escape,......Heading west. Straight into the sun." Ok Brundage- you slammed that Hollywood ending!
If you haven’t read “Doctor’s Wife” or “Someone Else’s Daughter” by Brundage~ I super highly recommend them. Excellent books, page-turners, amazingly interesting characters that I really cared about, descriptive images that burn your mind …
Sorry to say this was my least favorite of Brundage’s books ☹ It was disappointing for me, since her other 2 books make my favorite list! This was “too Hollywood” and not believable ~ much like Hugh’s script ‘The Adjuster”… (maybe that was the point?....hmmm)
Part 1 (Hugh’s voice) was good (not great)- However, as soon as Part Two arrived I quickly lost interest, didn’t really care how Hedda bought her car, and her relationship with Tom (bla, bla) etc.. Denny, Daisy (and her little rat) raised my interest but not enough. Like Jodi Picoult, Brundage usually does switch points of view, but I did not like it this time. It aggravated me.
Unfortunately, I was so disgruntled with the middle that the so-called thrilling finale, just didn’t thrill me. I could believe the actions Hugh took when he kidnapped Hedda to prove his ending but then when he puts Bruno in the airport all tied up & beats up Tom– nope- not buying it.
I did love the way Brundage describes the scenes of LA/Hollywood from the view of Hugh. I spent some time in these circles Hugh describes and I felt similarly not being in “the industry” and from a small town. The parties and people were surreal. It was nice to visit that again.
…..(page 9) “At this party people looked at him with curiosity, as if they were wondering who he was or what he did or what he’d done, and, because there was always the possibility that he was someone important- more important, perhaps, than a few of the other guests, - they smiled at him with interest, as if knowing him might be good for them.”
Brundage’s attempt to incorporate many issues was appreciated but did not succeed~how far will one go to make dreams come true to escape his dead end life? ~Hollywood idiosyncrasies ~ Iraq war & damaged veterans & women (Fatima) ~messed up relationships --- too many things ..not tied up very well.
One main problem is I didn’t ‘like’ or care about one character in this book. There was no one to root for. This book does not qualify as a “thriller”-but the story could be a thrilling movie …(like all of Brundage’s books).……….And poor poor Marion….I sincerely felt bad for that wife….talk about your husband going through a midlife crisis!!! ( I guess I liked her)
Oh & the ending - Come on!! "There's something beautiful about a woman making her escape,......Heading west. Straight into the sun." Ok Brundage- you slammed that Hollywood ending!
If you haven’t read “Doctor’s Wife” or “Someone Else’s Daughter” by Brundage~ I super highly recommend them. Excellent books, page-turners, amazingly interesting characters that I really cared about, descriptive images that burn your mind …
December 7, 2012
A hauntingly-written narrative about several misfits who, through a variety of circumstances, come together to have a major impact on each other's lives. We first meet Hugh Waters, an insurance salesman who is a writer wanna-be. He has left his wife in New Jersey and traveled to Los Angeles to confront a renowned film producer, Hedda Chase, who has rejected Hugh's screenplay. It soon becomes quite apparent that Waters is psychologically disturbed and his actions set the tone for the rest of the novel.
As the novel develops, we are able to follow Hedda's relationship with Tom Chase, another screenwriter, one with whom Hedda has fallen in love. And then there is Denny, a young veteran of the Iraq war. He comes into the picture after meeting a young vagrant, Daisy, whose life intersects with Hugh's through a chance meeting at a diner.
Each of these characters has led a troubled life and their subsequent interactions reflect that. As they come together, the actions taken impact them as individuals in addition to impacting their relationships with one another. "A Stranger Like You" portrays the need for self-knowledge and self-esteem and the ways in which each of these traits lays the foundation for interpersonal relationships. A very interesting and beautifully written novel.
As the novel develops, we are able to follow Hedda's relationship with Tom Chase, another screenwriter, one with whom Hedda has fallen in love. And then there is Denny, a young veteran of the Iraq war. He comes into the picture after meeting a young vagrant, Daisy, whose life intersects with Hugh's through a chance meeting at a diner.
Each of these characters has led a troubled life and their subsequent interactions reflect that. As they come together, the actions taken impact them as individuals in addition to impacting their relationships with one another. "A Stranger Like You" portrays the need for self-knowledge and self-esteem and the ways in which each of these traits lays the foundation for interpersonal relationships. A very interesting and beautifully written novel.
August 5, 2010
My third free book from the Goodreads giveaway program. An insurance underwriter writes a screenplay with the hopes of changing his mundane life. He is inches from a movie deal when a producer puts the kibosh on the whole project. He exacts his revenge by subjecting the producer to a scene from his screenplay. He drugs her, puts her in the trunk of her vintage BMW, drives to LAX and parks, leaving the keys in the ignition. The plight of the producer is the thread that links a number of interesting characters. This story is more about the internal struggles of these characters and their ability (or inability) to cope with the life that's been dealt to them than about the fate of the producer. Great story.
Read
June 16, 2024i liked it. people are whining in the reviews about the switching of POVs and how it's confusing and i'm not really sure what was confusing about that. it was pretty clear whose POV was whose. hugh fucking sucks but he's supposed to - sometimes people write books about bad people, idk!! it happens!
i didn't appreciate the author trying to humanize the military for me which is never going to happen, but she did make a good effort. and for those of you who hate hedda, have you considered you're just misogynists?
i didn't appreciate the author trying to humanize the military for me which is never going to happen, but she did make a good effort. and for those of you who hate hedda, have you considered you're just misogynists?
October 4, 2016
This book was really hard to rate, it's more a 2.5. Definitely not one of my favorites by Elizabeth Brundage. I had high hopes for it since I LOVED all her other books. I didn't like any of the characters. Denny had the most redeeming qualities, but just made really bad choices. Hugh was just plain awful and a horrible man. The ending just sort of happened and was blah.
January 24, 2025
100% needed a content warning
The plot could have been there but the writing POV was confusing/boring. Would not recommend
The plot could have been there but the writing POV was confusing/boring. Would not recommend
September 30, 2011
Not a review, just notes for myself.
1st chapter: I liked the beginning, I was expecting it to start with the man (Hugh) getting his script to the movie executive. So the beginning took me by a little surprise and I thought the beginning was more interested than the one I had thought. On the first chapter I noticed two things that irritated me some. First: the girl he takes with him to the motel room. I was so amazed that the girl just took of with him, there should´ve been some more talking between the two or something. The whole thing about the girl in the first chapter left me thinking: was she necessary to the story? At least, in did not sound like it. Maybe she´ll be more important later in the book, maybe not. What was written about her made me think that that was it about her. Second: the story seemed to me to jump abruptly from one place to another a few times. With different kinds of paragraph dividing it wouldn´t have felt like that.
After finishing the first chapter I´m thinking: how will the story continue. How is the author going to tell about the main characters doings when they are in different places? Is the girl going to have a part in the rest of the book? How will Hedda Chase be discovered, or will she?
2nd chapter: What I forgot to write on the first chapter was about Hedda: she wasn´t the usual women character in a book, she was a little fierce, not beautiful, not good mannered. I found it interesting.
On the second chapter I noticed I got a little irritated by the writing. At times it felt like sentences after senctences that weren´t that tied together. I thought the story kept jumping ahead. Hugh met with the other writer he had met on the party, Ida. It felt strange to me how fast they seemed to hit it off. Maybe I´ve been reaging old books and young adult books for too long? Maybe more adult books are different in this way. And maybe the characters are just that different than I am.
3rd chapter: The things that bugged me on the two first chapters didn´t come to me anymore. I think I was more concentrated in the reading and reading not just to read but to enjoy the reading. Hugh going to Hedda´s appartment and talking to Hedda´s boyfriend and ending up drinking with him made me think that Hugh has some obsession that makes him to stupid things, take risks that a "normal criminal" wouldn´t perhaps make. He went back to the car and found it had disappeared. I kept waiting on some information of what had happened to it. What had Hedda been doing? Had she come around at all or was she unconscious of all at the moment? There was also more background information on Hugh´s past life. He had some interest in men and he had cheated on his wife before. I had thought that he had been faithfull and a good husband till meeting Ida even though his marriage was obviously been dull for a while already. I thought this act of kidnapping Hedda was the first bad thing he had done.
After this chapter I´m waiting on some narration of Hedda´s thought and act in the trunk of the car. And if Hugh ever goes back to Hedda´s guy Tom to spend more time and getting to know him more. I think the risk of hanging out with him might make him regret his act more than he already did, discovering the good things about Hedda in addition to the bad things he only knew of her, making her more of a whole and familiar person to him that can only lead to more regret and suspicion of the act..
4th chapter: For a while I felt a little confused. A nice way of getting inside her head. Also a nice way of giving the reader some more about her personality and story. Reading this chapter really got me into it, sort of swept me away. Even though the chapter didn´t get the story going forwards, it did not disturb me in any way. I´ve been waiting to read about Hedda and what she´s doing in the trunk and what´s she´s thinking and feeling, but this chapter, in a good way, made me forget for a while what had happened to this person. It gave a short and nice story about three people meeting on a random day, that meant something different to them all.
5th chapter: Continued like the fourth one. At times the paragraphs bugged me again as the writing seemed to jump in the next paragraph into something or somewhere else. But reading this was easy and it was easy to keep reading..
6th chapter: I was disappointed that still the story didn´t return to the present, Hedda in the car and all that. As an individual chapter I really liked it, it could´ve been an idea for a totally different book what it told about. But as a whole, I think the book could´ve done without this chapter. At times I was yet again irritated about the paragraphs.. At this point all I´m thinking is when will it come back to telling about Hedda in the car and Hugh doing something. Actually, I had already forgotten what his name is..
Maybe if the book had started out with telling about Hedda´s life it would´ve worked out better, but now it just feels like filling in between the actual story, that the story of the kidnapping won´t have enough ideas to write about without something unrelated to that story in between..
7th chapter: Nothing new for me, the same as before..
8th chapter: When this chapter begun I thought "OH my god..not more of this." The chapter itself was nicely written and the story of Denny was interesting to read. But yet again I thought if this was necessary chapter for the story, of course it makes sense at the end.
9th chapter: I think things came together nicely in this chapter: Hugh, Daisy, Tom, Denny..but it should´ve happened earlier.
10th chapter: The story is going somewhere after the pause of Hedda´s personal story of her life. To me the book has gotten way better in these few last chapters now and I´ve gotten back the feeling of reading with enthusiasm.
11th chapter: A little disappointed it went back to this. I´m over halfway through the book and I´ve heard nothing of what Hedda´s doing, thinking or feeling while in the trunk..
12th chapter: Things told before made more sense after this chapter.
13th chapter: The same as the previous one..
14th chapter: Finally! Hedda´s in the trunk and the reader gets know what she´s doing! Then again this chapter was very short and the next one goes back to Hugh again..
15th chapter: Nothing new came to me while reading this one, the story seemed to get a new twist as Hugh seemed to get a new idea..
16th & 17th chapter: Things are moving on in the story now. The craziness of Hugh increases little by little, he´s started to plan some things he does, others he just does as the circumstances, to him, gives no other option. Denny and Daisy are driven into a mad situation with a woman they´ve never seen in their trunk, in a car Denny stole, a police car stopping them and then coming after them, them driving off the road where a man comes to them with a riffle. Things are finally happening! Even though the writing is still at times annoying and so are the paragraphs, but no I don´t pay that much attention to those as the story is now more interesting.
18th chapter: Denny and Daisy (and Hedda). There´s something sweet about them being together. Daisy has her doubts, which makes her sound more smart a person than she did in the very beginning of the book when she went with Hugh after having spoken just a little while with the man.
19th-24th chapters: Like already a few of the previous chapters, this was the real deal. What I had waited for a long while since the beginning of the book. I really did enjoy reading these chapters and I thought there were some really exciting things that happened at the end of the book. Giving a review for this book will be hard, since I liked the ending and beginning but felt the middle lacked something. In the end I understand why she wrote this book as she did, the other characters (apart from Hedda and Hugh) needed to be introduced before things actually started to happen and it gave the characters more depth. Still somehow, it should´ve been done differently to make the whole book interesting and exciting to read. Maybe if I´d known when I started to read that it was written like this, it would´ve made a difference, maybe not.
1st chapter: I liked the beginning, I was expecting it to start with the man (Hugh) getting his script to the movie executive. So the beginning took me by a little surprise and I thought the beginning was more interested than the one I had thought. On the first chapter I noticed two things that irritated me some. First: the girl he takes with him to the motel room. I was so amazed that the girl just took of with him, there should´ve been some more talking between the two or something. The whole thing about the girl in the first chapter left me thinking: was she necessary to the story? At least, in did not sound like it. Maybe she´ll be more important later in the book, maybe not. What was written about her made me think that that was it about her. Second: the story seemed to me to jump abruptly from one place to another a few times. With different kinds of paragraph dividing it wouldn´t have felt like that.
After finishing the first chapter I´m thinking: how will the story continue. How is the author going to tell about the main characters doings when they are in different places? Is the girl going to have a part in the rest of the book? How will Hedda Chase be discovered, or will she?
2nd chapter: What I forgot to write on the first chapter was about Hedda: she wasn´t the usual women character in a book, she was a little fierce, not beautiful, not good mannered. I found it interesting.
On the second chapter I noticed I got a little irritated by the writing. At times it felt like sentences after senctences that weren´t that tied together. I thought the story kept jumping ahead. Hugh met with the other writer he had met on the party, Ida. It felt strange to me how fast they seemed to hit it off. Maybe I´ve been reaging old books and young adult books for too long? Maybe more adult books are different in this way. And maybe the characters are just that different than I am.
3rd chapter: The things that bugged me on the two first chapters didn´t come to me anymore. I think I was more concentrated in the reading and reading not just to read but to enjoy the reading. Hugh going to Hedda´s appartment and talking to Hedda´s boyfriend and ending up drinking with him made me think that Hugh has some obsession that makes him to stupid things, take risks that a "normal criminal" wouldn´t perhaps make. He went back to the car and found it had disappeared. I kept waiting on some information of what had happened to it. What had Hedda been doing? Had she come around at all or was she unconscious of all at the moment? There was also more background information on Hugh´s past life. He had some interest in men and he had cheated on his wife before. I had thought that he had been faithfull and a good husband till meeting Ida even though his marriage was obviously been dull for a while already. I thought this act of kidnapping Hedda was the first bad thing he had done.
After this chapter I´m waiting on some narration of Hedda´s thought and act in the trunk of the car. And if Hugh ever goes back to Hedda´s guy Tom to spend more time and getting to know him more. I think the risk of hanging out with him might make him regret his act more than he already did, discovering the good things about Hedda in addition to the bad things he only knew of her, making her more of a whole and familiar person to him that can only lead to more regret and suspicion of the act..
4th chapter: For a while I felt a little confused. A nice way of getting inside her head. Also a nice way of giving the reader some more about her personality and story. Reading this chapter really got me into it, sort of swept me away. Even though the chapter didn´t get the story going forwards, it did not disturb me in any way. I´ve been waiting to read about Hedda and what she´s doing in the trunk and what´s she´s thinking and feeling, but this chapter, in a good way, made me forget for a while what had happened to this person. It gave a short and nice story about three people meeting on a random day, that meant something different to them all.
5th chapter: Continued like the fourth one. At times the paragraphs bugged me again as the writing seemed to jump in the next paragraph into something or somewhere else. But reading this was easy and it was easy to keep reading..
6th chapter: I was disappointed that still the story didn´t return to the present, Hedda in the car and all that. As an individual chapter I really liked it, it could´ve been an idea for a totally different book what it told about. But as a whole, I think the book could´ve done without this chapter. At times I was yet again irritated about the paragraphs.. At this point all I´m thinking is when will it come back to telling about Hedda in the car and Hugh doing something. Actually, I had already forgotten what his name is..
Maybe if the book had started out with telling about Hedda´s life it would´ve worked out better, but now it just feels like filling in between the actual story, that the story of the kidnapping won´t have enough ideas to write about without something unrelated to that story in between..
7th chapter: Nothing new for me, the same as before..
8th chapter: When this chapter begun I thought "OH my god..not more of this." The chapter itself was nicely written and the story of Denny was interesting to read. But yet again I thought if this was necessary chapter for the story, of course it makes sense at the end.
9th chapter: I think things came together nicely in this chapter: Hugh, Daisy, Tom, Denny..but it should´ve happened earlier.
10th chapter: The story is going somewhere after the pause of Hedda´s personal story of her life. To me the book has gotten way better in these few last chapters now and I´ve gotten back the feeling of reading with enthusiasm.
11th chapter: A little disappointed it went back to this. I´m over halfway through the book and I´ve heard nothing of what Hedda´s doing, thinking or feeling while in the trunk..
12th chapter: Things told before made more sense after this chapter.
13th chapter: The same as the previous one..
14th chapter: Finally! Hedda´s in the trunk and the reader gets know what she´s doing! Then again this chapter was very short and the next one goes back to Hugh again..
15th chapter: Nothing new came to me while reading this one, the story seemed to get a new twist as Hugh seemed to get a new idea..
16th & 17th chapter: Things are moving on in the story now. The craziness of Hugh increases little by little, he´s started to plan some things he does, others he just does as the circumstances, to him, gives no other option. Denny and Daisy are driven into a mad situation with a woman they´ve never seen in their trunk, in a car Denny stole, a police car stopping them and then coming after them, them driving off the road where a man comes to them with a riffle. Things are finally happening! Even though the writing is still at times annoying and so are the paragraphs, but no I don´t pay that much attention to those as the story is now more interesting.
18th chapter: Denny and Daisy (and Hedda). There´s something sweet about them being together. Daisy has her doubts, which makes her sound more smart a person than she did in the very beginning of the book when she went with Hugh after having spoken just a little while with the man.
19th-24th chapters: Like already a few of the previous chapters, this was the real deal. What I had waited for a long while since the beginning of the book. I really did enjoy reading these chapters and I thought there were some really exciting things that happened at the end of the book. Giving a review for this book will be hard, since I liked the ending and beginning but felt the middle lacked something. In the end I understand why she wrote this book as she did, the other characters (apart from Hedda and Hugh) needed to be introduced before things actually started to happen and it gave the characters more depth. Still somehow, it should´ve been done differently to make the whole book interesting and exciting to read. Maybe if I´d known when I started to read that it was written like this, it would´ve made a difference, maybe not.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 18, 2021
For the majority of this book I was amazed at the unseemly and unsettling atmosphere Brundage created with her writing style. Classic noir style with plenty of unsavory, unlikeable, and outright awful people in the mix. Once the story shifts its POV to another character I knew I was in for something a bit more complex, something that would undo my early impressions of what was happening. In some ways, no one here is all that wonderful of a person, but for all the purists not faking it for social media or bullshitting their way through an interaction there are thousands upon thousands that do just those very things. Life is never as simple as we'd like, and few people are anything like what we think or want them to be. Sometimes we just get lost. Plenty of reviewers have made comparisons to the 'Saw' films but I find them facile, and wrong. The fact I enjoyed the concept of those films may be a reason to question my judgment of this book, but what Brundage presents is hardly gratuitous torture and vile nastiness on that level. A horrendous thing to do, surely, as if that needs pointing out. The possibility someone reads this and tries it (meta!!) hardly makes the book's premise blameworthy. Noteworthy - to some - for a book written by a female, all the women in this book are presented poorly in nearly every respect, which is bad if one is reading to find uplifting examples of women who don't need men for, well, anything. But the narrative works because of how we feel and at least the characters make us feel something about them. The plot takes a poor turn somewhere amidst the Iraqi war veteran's bits, as Brundage shifts closer to apologetics for bad choices instead of owning the choices, knowing that choosing isn't always easy, but the fact we are weighing options means there are in fact options. I won't theorize on PTSD in war veterans, or in anyone else for that matter, I just thought this element detracted from the pace and feel of the story. I did like the slightly non-linear plot, as it made me think about what people were doing and when, and how those choices appeared after the fact and in the eyes of other characters. I had hoped for a different ending, something more in line with the story's jumping off point - maybe like the non-American version of the film 'The Vanishing' - but the aforementioned 'poor turn' held too much sway in Brundage's choice, it would seem. Even so, I did think this was quite well done.
June 2, 2025
This is the third Elizabeth Brundage book that I have read. In this book, Hugh Waters, a Hollywood wannabe by night and an employee at an insurance company by day, is enraged when his screenplay, his tour de force, is rejected by Hedda Chase, a powerful movie mogul. According to Ms. Chase, the story is too violent, and the ending too cliched. He’ll show her, Hugh thinks, by reenacting the ending, using Hedda Chase as the prop. To that end, he kidnaps Hedda and throws her trussed body in the trunk of her car. Following his script to the letter, he abandons the car at LAX, almost begging someone to steal it. This is story about how far someone may go to fulfill his dreams. Set in the high pressure of life in Hollywood, it is a scary look at just how quickly things can go wrong. I would characterize the story as more intense psychological story than as a thriller. I did enjoy the book; it just was not what I expected. If you are an Elizabeth Brundage fan, I do recommend that you read this one.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
⭐️⭐️⭐️
June 20, 2017
The problem with a lot of modern fiction is that there is no one with whom to empathise. And that is true of this book. If I'm going to spend several hours on a book, I don't want to end up thinking. What the hell was that all about! What a waste of time. A friend gave me the book, saying it was among her current favourites. Not so strangely, the friend is noted for lack of empathy! She gave me four more. Oh dear. Reading them will be like homework. The other thing was the writing, I found myself constantly mentally re-editing. Too many adjectives. Dangling modifiers. With the author's substantial writing qualifications and history, I was surprised. Where are the professional editors at her publishers? Killed off through lack of money? More editors and more empathy in the future. Please.
May 12, 2017
The book sounded interesting so I gave it a try. After the first 30 pages I was hating the protagonist so I went back and read some reviews. People seem to either love it or loathe it; I figured that I would fall into the loathe category but decided to give it a bit more of a read to pull me in. I'm glad I stuck with it. It was interesting and introspective and I could not tell what was going to happen, which I like. Some reviewers hated the changing points of view but it didn't alter my enjoyment of the story at all.
February 24, 2019
I liked the premise of this book, but ultimately, it wasn't worth it. There's nothing to make you care about the characters at all. The characters are unlikeable in every way. They're shallow. There's a lot of description, but no real substance. On top of that, you have a non-chronological timeline which just frustrates things further. If Brundage spent half as much energy in fleshing out her characters and creating a structured plot as she did describing every single setting imaginable, this book could have been good or at least "ok".
April 24, 2021
I liked it and ordered my next Brundage book. LOL Love this author's work. As for ending Q that a Goodreads member posed, this is the way I read it. SPOILER ALERT --
I'm getting that our protag (she pretty much admitted it in a sentence at end) that even though she survived her ordeal, a part of her was lost, was gone. But leaving it open for possible reconnecting with that part on the road in the future.
Either that or she succumbed and her spirit left on a road to better places. I prefer that she lived.
I'm getting that our protag (she pretty much admitted it in a sentence at end) that even though she survived her ordeal, a part of her was lost, was gone. But leaving it open for possible reconnecting with that part on the road in the future.
Either that or she succumbed and her spirit left on a road to better places. I prefer that she lived.
March 3, 2021
4 Stars. This is a literary thriller, well done. The ending is surprising, as it should be. I like Ms. Brundage’s style: a well created story, well told. On the surface, the novel is about a disaffected script writer is search of “justice”. Underlying this, however, are the ways the characters discover what really matters in their various lives. There are several intersecting paths that converge along the way. Worth your time.
November 26, 2023
This book was interesting to say the least. I couldn’t wrap my head around it to begin with, it’s not a bad book but it’s definitely not my favorite. The themes are a bit sensitive to some so I advise that you check it out before you really read it. Otherwise the writing was good and I noticed in the acknowledgment that the author did research on the impact on soldiers and war and its effects on everyone. The characters were written well.
March 27, 2012
Hugh Waters: Bad marriage. Boring life. Bottled dreams, now smashed. Big problem.
Denny Rios: Unloved child. Unraveling psyche. Unsung hero.
Hedda Chase: Privileged. Powerful. Professional. Pitiful.
When Hugh Waters, insurance agent, takes a screenwriting class and miraculously sells his salacious thriller to Hollywood, his drab and unhappy life takes on sudden meaning. But when a Hollywood executive dies, the successor, Ivy Leaguer Hedda Chase, denounces the script as chauvinistic and unbelievable, resulting in a cancelled contract for Hugh.
Hugh snaps, flies to LA, and stalks Hedda with a vague plan to convince her she’s wrong about his story. Instead, with no qualms and with the calculating, level-headed insanity of a true sociopath, he submits her to the same quandary the character in his film endures, to prove that his plot is plausible. Hedda is locked in the trunk of her vintage BMW and abandoned at the airport, keys dangling in the ignition.
On another path, Iraq war veteran Denny Rios, pushed and berated by a group of decadent soldiers, was forced to half-heartedly join in the horrific rape of a young Iraqi girl when on duty overseas. Haunted by the experience, sickened by guilt, never free of the girl’s face in his nightmares, Denny flees when the cops approach his aunt and uncle’s home and steals the car with Hedda still bound and gagged in the trunk.
I know, it’s an intriguing plot. But it’s not the storyline that captivated me in this novel. It’s more the Dostoevsky-like telling of the tale.
Although A Stranger Like You is billed as a mystery/thriller, I’d prefer to see it classified as literary psychological fiction. The “literary” tag comes from the pure poetry that infiltrates Brundage’s well-written prose.
As a boy, he’d gone to the Jersey shore in summertime, but this was the Pacific. There was something about this ocean. In the distance, the air looked brown, like an old-fashioned sepia print, the water copper in the sunlight. The sea was calm, the air smelled of fish. Savage birds dove and fought.
Here’s another passage:
They would smoke pot and make love, her skin the impenitent green of old bay leaves, her nipples like the smudged rubber thimbles of a bookkeeper, and then she’d make him tea with mint that she grew on her windowsill. Compared to his wife, Jolene was easily satisfied, uninhibited about her nakedness, her smells, her moody breath. She moved with the unhindered heft of a wrestler…
Brundage showcases very long and winding passages that contain little dialog or action, aside from the running stream-of-consciousness thoughts of each character. Layered over and between each other, these passages of inner thoughts, often told in present tense, second person, lend kaleidoscopic views to the story, hopping back and forth through time and focusing on the unique angle seen by each character. It’s the use of second person (“you” POV) that brings the intimacy to these segments.
Death is something you fear, and you can never gauge its proximity. Sometimes you sense it encroaching upon you like some thief in the night, looking into your windows. Sometimes you lay in bed, brittle, waiting for evil to find you. Images sprawl through your mind, arbitrary scraps of terror that have become all too ordinary. To some degree, you have been nurtured on fear.
Here’s another:
Maybe you are just tired after the long flight, but you feel conspicuous, profoundly aware of your middle class American roots, drawing attention to yourself as only an American can, in your schlumpy sweat suit, your clunky bag of indispensables (vitamins, pills, and medications for any possible problem, dental floss, makeup, Tampax, Nikes, your favorite Patagonia cap), and the way you move, with carbonated overflow, in comparison to the serene aerodynamics of the locals. As a female, you are sensitive to the feverish curiosity of strangers. Their eyes coat your body like paint.
Of course, there’s suspense that draws the reader to the finale. We need to know what happens to Hedda Chase, locked in the trunk of that blue BMW. But it’s the intense character profiles and the disturbing intimate lives we glimpse through Brundage’s unique approach that were most riveting.
Following are some favorite lines from A Stranger Like You:
He didn’t tell them the stars were like the teeth of the dead.
***
He carried the stories around in his pockets, in his fists, like stones.
***
Doubt is your compass.
***
…Sunrise like the smeared rouge on a whore.
***
A bruise floats over his eye like a jellyfish.
Brundage digs deep inside her characters’ heads. In addition to the primary characters above, we peek inside the lives of a disillusioned screenwriter (Tom Foster), an escaped and ill-fated Iraqi student (Fatima), and a young homeless waif of a girl (Daisy). All of Brundage’s well-rounded characters play to an unusual backdrop of a seedy vision of Hollywood interwoven with images of the war in Iraq, told through Denny’s thoughts.
This is not a fast read. It’s not a Patterson, or Hoag, or a quick thrill ride that you’ll devour in one sitting. It’s a study in human nature, and you’ll have to work your way through it. But I guarantee, you’ll enjoy the ride. The characters–all who move masterfully through their arcs of development–will haunt you long after you finish A Stranger Like You.
Denny Rios: Unloved child. Unraveling psyche. Unsung hero.
Hedda Chase: Privileged. Powerful. Professional. Pitiful.
When Hugh Waters, insurance agent, takes a screenwriting class and miraculously sells his salacious thriller to Hollywood, his drab and unhappy life takes on sudden meaning. But when a Hollywood executive dies, the successor, Ivy Leaguer Hedda Chase, denounces the script as chauvinistic and unbelievable, resulting in a cancelled contract for Hugh.
Hugh snaps, flies to LA, and stalks Hedda with a vague plan to convince her she’s wrong about his story. Instead, with no qualms and with the calculating, level-headed insanity of a true sociopath, he submits her to the same quandary the character in his film endures, to prove that his plot is plausible. Hedda is locked in the trunk of her vintage BMW and abandoned at the airport, keys dangling in the ignition.
On another path, Iraq war veteran Denny Rios, pushed and berated by a group of decadent soldiers, was forced to half-heartedly join in the horrific rape of a young Iraqi girl when on duty overseas. Haunted by the experience, sickened by guilt, never free of the girl’s face in his nightmares, Denny flees when the cops approach his aunt and uncle’s home and steals the car with Hedda still bound and gagged in the trunk.
I know, it’s an intriguing plot. But it’s not the storyline that captivated me in this novel. It’s more the Dostoevsky-like telling of the tale.
Although A Stranger Like You is billed as a mystery/thriller, I’d prefer to see it classified as literary psychological fiction. The “literary” tag comes from the pure poetry that infiltrates Brundage’s well-written prose.
As a boy, he’d gone to the Jersey shore in summertime, but this was the Pacific. There was something about this ocean. In the distance, the air looked brown, like an old-fashioned sepia print, the water copper in the sunlight. The sea was calm, the air smelled of fish. Savage birds dove and fought.
Here’s another passage:
They would smoke pot and make love, her skin the impenitent green of old bay leaves, her nipples like the smudged rubber thimbles of a bookkeeper, and then she’d make him tea with mint that she grew on her windowsill. Compared to his wife, Jolene was easily satisfied, uninhibited about her nakedness, her smells, her moody breath. She moved with the unhindered heft of a wrestler…
Brundage showcases very long and winding passages that contain little dialog or action, aside from the running stream-of-consciousness thoughts of each character. Layered over and between each other, these passages of inner thoughts, often told in present tense, second person, lend kaleidoscopic views to the story, hopping back and forth through time and focusing on the unique angle seen by each character. It’s the use of second person (“you” POV) that brings the intimacy to these segments.
Death is something you fear, and you can never gauge its proximity. Sometimes you sense it encroaching upon you like some thief in the night, looking into your windows. Sometimes you lay in bed, brittle, waiting for evil to find you. Images sprawl through your mind, arbitrary scraps of terror that have become all too ordinary. To some degree, you have been nurtured on fear.
Here’s another:
Maybe you are just tired after the long flight, but you feel conspicuous, profoundly aware of your middle class American roots, drawing attention to yourself as only an American can, in your schlumpy sweat suit, your clunky bag of indispensables (vitamins, pills, and medications for any possible problem, dental floss, makeup, Tampax, Nikes, your favorite Patagonia cap), and the way you move, with carbonated overflow, in comparison to the serene aerodynamics of the locals. As a female, you are sensitive to the feverish curiosity of strangers. Their eyes coat your body like paint.
Of course, there’s suspense that draws the reader to the finale. We need to know what happens to Hedda Chase, locked in the trunk of that blue BMW. But it’s the intense character profiles and the disturbing intimate lives we glimpse through Brundage’s unique approach that were most riveting.
Following are some favorite lines from A Stranger Like You:
He didn’t tell them the stars were like the teeth of the dead.
***
He carried the stories around in his pockets, in his fists, like stones.
***
Doubt is your compass.
***
…Sunrise like the smeared rouge on a whore.
***
A bruise floats over his eye like a jellyfish.
Brundage digs deep inside her characters’ heads. In addition to the primary characters above, we peek inside the lives of a disillusioned screenwriter (Tom Foster), an escaped and ill-fated Iraqi student (Fatima), and a young homeless waif of a girl (Daisy). All of Brundage’s well-rounded characters play to an unusual backdrop of a seedy vision of Hollywood interwoven with images of the war in Iraq, told through Denny’s thoughts.
This is not a fast read. It’s not a Patterson, or Hoag, or a quick thrill ride that you’ll devour in one sitting. It’s a study in human nature, and you’ll have to work your way through it. But I guarantee, you’ll enjoy the ride. The characters–all who move masterfully through their arcs of development–will haunt you long after you finish A Stranger Like You.
January 24, 2020
-This is a crime book.
Book has the story of three people Hugh, Hedda, Denny.
Hugh is a disturbed character.
Hedda is a well known film producer, whose life is lonely.
Denny is a war vet.
I enjoyed reading this but felt the end was cut short.
I wish it would of gone more into what happens after the events, at the end.
This book was a quick read.
Book has the story of three people Hugh, Hedda, Denny.
Hugh is a disturbed character.
Hedda is a well known film producer, whose life is lonely.
Denny is a war vet.
I enjoyed reading this but felt the end was cut short.
I wish it would of gone more into what happens after the events, at the end.
This book was a quick read.
June 8, 2020
I liked the premise, just didn't love the execution. Switching between characters each chapter is confusing enough without adding the switch between second and third person. The level of gruesomeness felt unnecessary and not a single one of the characters actually learned anything or grew throughout the novel. Better than I expected but not something I enjoyed.
October 11, 2010
There are many things I can say about A Stranger Like You by Brundage. I'll try to keep them in order. I won a copy of this book on GoodReads directly from Penguin Group marketing department.
Brundage does a good job of crafting her characters at the beginning. There is Hugh Waters, a disgruntled man who works in an insurance agency and is married to a woman he is no longer in love with. He spends all of his spare time writing a screenplay that no one wants to produce. When it finally gets signed, the producer dies and the new executive decides the screenplay is utter crap and cans Hugh's movie production. This is all explained very early on in the story. If this were the entire book, that would have been a good one to read. But, this is all background information to build up to the reasons WHY Hugh decides to fly across the country to capture the executive who canned his movie and reenact the plot of his thriller onto her.
His thriller involves capturing a woman, locking her in the trunk of a car, leaving it in an airport parking lot with the keys in the ignition, someone steals the car, finds the girl, rapes her, etc. This is the movie that he wants to reenact on the executive Hedda Chase. So, he does just that. He locks her in the trunk of her own car, leaves her in the airport parking lot with the keys in the ignition and walks away. (This wouldn't be possible after 911 because every airport is HIGHLY secured and recorded. That car would have been broken into by the bomb squad within a few days)
THEN, Hugh begins to take over her life, schmoozing with her boyfriend, attending movie festivals, screenings, parties, etc. I don't know how he would have gotten into these parties if he isn't even well known on the scene. Can I do this too? Show up in Hollywood and just start schmoozing with the movie executives to get one of my pieces made?
We "meet" Hedda before she was in the trunk as kind of a flashback to what happened before and after she canned Hugh's script. She is a powerful woman who has worked her entire life to get where she is- WITHOUT sleeping with anyone to make it there. She works hard, day and night, and decides that she is sick and tired of seeing woman mistreated in movies. She wants to begin making movies that actually MEAN something to the world. Movies that will show our future how we were as people back in the 2000s. Granted, she can be a bit snotty at times, but as a woman in her position of power, I don't feel it was ever too off kilter for her to be so. Hedda was my favorite character in this story, even though there were definitely moments when I didn't really care for her.
The third/ fourth characters are the man who stole the car (as predicted in the script) and the young girlfriend. How they all happened to be so tightly intertwined is beyond me. What are the odds? I didn't like the young man, Denny, because he was the type who KNEW what was right and wrong, and who didn't stand up for himself or anyone else, for fear what it would mean for him or his reputation. He ran away from problems instead of facing them head on, he made excuses for the way he lived his life, and he came up with really piss poor ways of fixing things. He isn't a HERO if he KNEW someone was in the trunk, and he STILL left her in there for the drive across the country with his girlfriend. Sorry, but if I was Hedda, I would have punched him right in the face as soon as I got my strength up. Not to mention, the run-in with the cop and barn was somehow completely left out at the ending. That boy got himself into a lot of trouble within a few short days. He was almost as bad of a character as Hugh. There was nothing to like about these people.
I could relate to Hugh's situation. I didn't particularly care for his point of view on things, but I could sympathize with him. Then he sort of just snapped. But Brundage made it seem like it was a logical snap. Like a man who is really struggling for his place in life can suddenly become someone who actually chases after people to kill them. Murderous tendencies are typically something that someone has had for much of their lives. He was PLOTTING ways to kill people. It's not like it was in the heat of a moment, like I would have believed the story if that was the case.
In the end, the story was... okay. I liked the middle chapters where they were discussing her love life with Tom, her struggle to make a difference through movies, the story of Fatima. But the beginning was hard to get through and the ending I left for days before I gathered enough gumption to get through the last twenty pages.
If this wasn't a thriller-based book, and if we took all that crap out of the story and based the book on just the twisted way someone's life can change when they're not in the right place at the right time... or how people's lives can become so entangled, how actions effect someone else every move you make.... or on the love story between Tom and Hedda... or the story about Daisy as a whole on its own... If we took out the crap and fleshed out the really really good stuff... this book could have been unforgettable.
Brundage does a good job of crafting her characters at the beginning. There is Hugh Waters, a disgruntled man who works in an insurance agency and is married to a woman he is no longer in love with. He spends all of his spare time writing a screenplay that no one wants to produce. When it finally gets signed, the producer dies and the new executive decides the screenplay is utter crap and cans Hugh's movie production. This is all explained very early on in the story. If this were the entire book, that would have been a good one to read. But, this is all background information to build up to the reasons WHY Hugh decides to fly across the country to capture the executive who canned his movie and reenact the plot of his thriller onto her.
His thriller involves capturing a woman, locking her in the trunk of a car, leaving it in an airport parking lot with the keys in the ignition, someone steals the car, finds the girl, rapes her, etc. This is the movie that he wants to reenact on the executive Hedda Chase. So, he does just that. He locks her in the trunk of her own car, leaves her in the airport parking lot with the keys in the ignition and walks away. (This wouldn't be possible after 911 because every airport is HIGHLY secured and recorded. That car would have been broken into by the bomb squad within a few days)
THEN, Hugh begins to take over her life, schmoozing with her boyfriend, attending movie festivals, screenings, parties, etc. I don't know how he would have gotten into these parties if he isn't even well known on the scene. Can I do this too? Show up in Hollywood and just start schmoozing with the movie executives to get one of my pieces made?
We "meet" Hedda before she was in the trunk as kind of a flashback to what happened before and after she canned Hugh's script. She is a powerful woman who has worked her entire life to get where she is- WITHOUT sleeping with anyone to make it there. She works hard, day and night, and decides that she is sick and tired of seeing woman mistreated in movies. She wants to begin making movies that actually MEAN something to the world. Movies that will show our future how we were as people back in the 2000s. Granted, she can be a bit snotty at times, but as a woman in her position of power, I don't feel it was ever too off kilter for her to be so. Hedda was my favorite character in this story, even though there were definitely moments when I didn't really care for her.
The third/ fourth characters are the man who stole the car (as predicted in the script) and the young girlfriend. How they all happened to be so tightly intertwined is beyond me. What are the odds? I didn't like the young man, Denny, because he was the type who KNEW what was right and wrong, and who didn't stand up for himself or anyone else, for fear what it would mean for him or his reputation. He ran away from problems instead of facing them head on, he made excuses for the way he lived his life, and he came up with really piss poor ways of fixing things. He isn't a HERO if he KNEW someone was in the trunk, and he STILL left her in there for the drive across the country with his girlfriend. Sorry, but if I was Hedda, I would have punched him right in the face as soon as I got my strength up. Not to mention, the run-in with the cop and barn was somehow completely left out at the ending. That boy got himself into a lot of trouble within a few short days. He was almost as bad of a character as Hugh. There was nothing to like about these people.
I could relate to Hugh's situation. I didn't particularly care for his point of view on things, but I could sympathize with him. Then he sort of just snapped. But Brundage made it seem like it was a logical snap. Like a man who is really struggling for his place in life can suddenly become someone who actually chases after people to kill them. Murderous tendencies are typically something that someone has had for much of their lives. He was PLOTTING ways to kill people. It's not like it was in the heat of a moment, like I would have believed the story if that was the case.
In the end, the story was... okay. I liked the middle chapters where they were discussing her love life with Tom, her struggle to make a difference through movies, the story of Fatima. But the beginning was hard to get through and the ending I left for days before I gathered enough gumption to get through the last twenty pages.
If this wasn't a thriller-based book, and if we took all that crap out of the story and based the book on just the twisted way someone's life can change when they're not in the right place at the right time... or how people's lives can become so entangled, how actions effect someone else every move you make.... or on the love story between Tom and Hedda... or the story about Daisy as a whole on its own... If we took out the crap and fleshed out the really really good stuff... this book could have been unforgettable.
August 29, 2017
"All Things Cease to Appear" is one of my favorite books of the last year, so much so that I went back and read all of Elizabeth Brundage's books. This one is my least favorite. The style is purposefully campy, but it's all a little ridiculous. A short, fun read though.
September 9, 2017
This falls firmly in the category of books I wanted to like but it was so overly drawn out that it killed the story. Also I normally love the changing perspective but I don't feel it was done well in this book.
January 27, 2018
This is much better than The Doctor’s Wife by the same author. Basically your main character is crazy and living in LA. The other characters he meets in Hollywood are successful. I liked hearing the story from the different characters perspective.
October 15, 2021
Well that was an interesting experience! I went back and forth between wanting to put it aside and then wanting to continue. This cruel and intertwined story was puncuated by some lovely passages, insights and phrases. There is a lot going on in this book....a lot.
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