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Summary
Summary
"An eerie and gripping tale of suspense....A triumph."
--Boston Globe
A stunning and chilling thriller from the author of the New York Times bestseller Island of Lost Girls that further burnishes her reputation as "One of the brightest new stars of literary suspense" (Los Angeles Times online).
When Henry, Tess, Winnie, and Suz form the Compassionate Dismantlers in college, the first rule of their manifesto is, "To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart." But their penchant for acts of meaningful vandalism and elaborate, often dangerous pranks results in Suz's death in the woods of Vermont--a tragedy the surviving Dismantlers decide to cover up.
Nearly a decade later, Henry and Tess are desperate to forget, but their guilt isn't ready to let them go. When a mysterious Dismantler-style postcard drives a past prank victim to suicide, it sets off a chain of terrifying events that threatens to tear apart their world and engulf their inquisitive nine-year-old daughter, Emma. Is there someone who wants to reveal their secrets? Or is it possible Suz has found a way to enact revenge?
Full of white-knuckle tension with deeply human characters caught in circumstances beyond their control, Jennifer McMahon's enthralling story proves that she is a master at weaving the fear of the supernatural with the stark realities of life.
Author Notes
Jennifer McMahon was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1968. She received a BA from Goddard College in 1991 and studied poetry for a year in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. Before becoming full-time writer in 2000, she worked as a house painter, farm worker, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness. Her first novel, Promise Not to Tell, was published in 2007. Her other works include Island of Lost Girls, Dismantled, and My Tiki Girl. In 2014, her title The Winter People made The New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A prank gone wrong drives this outstanding novel from bestseller McMahon (Island of Lost Girls). The summer after graduation, four friends, who formed an art group called the Compassionate Dismantlers at Vermont's Sexton College, live together in a remote cabin and commit increasingly brash acts of sabotage. When they go too far and their leader, Suz Pierce, dies, the group disbands, vowing never to speak about what happened. Ten years later, two of the group, Henry DeForge and Tess Kahle, are unhappily married with a nine-year-old daughter, Emma. When the suicide of a Sexton friend sends a PI digging into the past, Henry and Tess fear that the dead may not be truly buried. By alternating the present-day lives of Henry, Tess and Emma with the origins of the Dismantlers, McMahon allows the inexorable sense of dread to build incrementally. Perhaps most memorable are not the young artists but Emma, a child whose intense imagination only adds fuel to the slow-burning fire. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Dismantlement equals freedom. To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart. These are the credos of the Compassionate Dismantlers, a subversive clique of art majors in a Vermont college spearheaded by a sexy and diabolical prankster. Suz purports to be an eco-saboteur, but jealousy and revenge are her primary motives. How strangely bewitched her followers are, how dangerous their actions become, and how wretchedly things go wrong. Nine years after the outlaw group's catastrophic demise, survivors Henry and Tess live isolated in the countryside, harboring a ruinous secret. Now it seems that the time of reckoning is at hand. As their sweet, preternatural nine-year-old daughter, Emma, grows increasingly, even maniacally devoted to her imaginary friend, inexplicable messages appear, crucial objects disappear, and someone is watching, if not stalking the increasingly freaked-out family. Are the Dismantlers reassembling? In her third, elegantly spooky mystery revolving around the vulnerability of a young girl and a haunting past, McMahon fashions a fresh and entrancing ghost-in-the-woods tale replete with startling psychoses, delectable Hitchcockian motifs, and dangerous attractions.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2009 Booklist
Kirkus Review
The collective sins of four college friends come home to roost more than a decade after a bizarre tragedy scattered them in this disturbing, darkly hypnotic novel by McMahon (Island of Lost Girls, 2008, etc.). In college, promising art students Tess and Henry belonged to a group called the "Compassionate Dismantlers." Led by Suz, a rebellious blond waif with bisexual tendencies and a healthy contempt for society and order, they proclaimed "Dismantlement Equals Freedom" and tormented a fellow student who had been one member's boyfriend. Eventually, something they did was so troubling that it continues to cast a dark and disturbing shadow over the now-married Tess and Henry. The troubled couple has separated: Henry has moved into a small apartment in the workshop in back of their Vermont home; Tess continues to live in the main house with their daughter Emma, a misfit who obsesses over a moose, the number nine and her affinity for an imaginary playmate. When an attempt to reconcile her parents backfires, the Dismantlers reunite in a way that Henry and Tess would have never imagined, bringing with them their penchant for spreading destruction and mayhem. As Henry struggles with his fears for his daughter, Tess deals with an unexpected attraction to a strange woman, and Emma simply struggles. McMahon's deftly creepy prose creates a world of chaos and abuse; the book brims with unexpected and often startling plot twists, taking the reader on a strange journey that never disappoints. But while the characters are memorable, they're also difficult to care about. Sometimes beautifully written and extraordinarily imaginative; the only thing it lacks is human interest. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Ten years ago, five students went into the Vermont woods to live and breathe their art in a cabin by a lake; only four came back. The survivors--Tess, Henry, Winnie, and Spencer--have tried to forget that summer, but they are forced to confront it by a mysterious postcard that quotes Suz, the missing member and charismatic ringleader. Spencer kills himself, an act that sets in motion an investigation that will test Tess and Henry's rocky marriage and endanger their nine-year-old daughter, Emma. McMahon builds the suspense well, using several creepy fake-outs as she muddies the waters with a private detective, a mysterious art patron, and most potent of all, Emma's imaginary friend, Danner. But is Danner imaginary? A sign of mental imbalance? Or is she something more--ghostly? VERDICT No one here is particularly likable, especially Suz, with her tiresome manifesto of destruction, but McMahon's skill keeps the reader wondering just what happened that night at the lake and what form revenge will take. McMahon's previous literary thrillers, Promise Not To Tell (2007) and Island of Lost Girls (2008), sold well; expect some demand. It might also appeal to readers who enjoyed Donna Tartt's The Secret History.--Devon Thomas, DevIndexing, Chelsea, MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Dismantled A Novel Chapter One Present Day "Dismantlement equals freedom." Suz is there, whispering the words in his ear, each syllable hot and twisted. She's glowing, radiant, still twenty-one and burning with the fierce need to fuck up the world. The dead don't age. He finishes the knot, his hands steady, without the slightest tremble, then climbs onto the chair and throws the rope up over one of the beams in the kitchen. Old, hand-hewn beams his builder rescued from a salvage yard. They'd reminded him of Vermont. Of the cabin near the lake. In his mind, he goes back ten years, sees Suz coming up the path, stepping into the clearing, pole in one hand, string of fish in the other: bass, sunfish, trout. They glisten like jewels, strung on the braided nylon rope she's carefully looped through their mouths and gills. Suz's walk is a dance, her movements fluid, the silk tunic she wears flutters around her, making it seem as if the wind itself is carrying her, buoying her along like a kite. She winks at him. He loves her. He hates her. He doesn't want to be here, but there's no way he could ever leave. Once you're in her orbit, it's impossible to pull yourself away. The others gather around as she lays the fish out on the table to clean them. She pulls the trout off the braided rope, lays it flat on newspaper, and slides the knife in, slitting it open along its belly from gills to vent. The fish opens its mouth, sucking at air. Suz smiles, showing crooked teeth, pushes her fingers gently inside the fish, widening the opening with her hand. The skin stretches; the movement of her fingers produces a wet, tearing sound. "To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart," Suz says, tugging out a string of entrails, sticky and shimmering with rainbows, like oil on a puddle. "You never really got it, did you, babycakes?" he hears her whisper in his ear. "No," he tells her, slipping the rope around his neck, pulling the postcard from his pocket to look at one last time. "But I do now." He steps off the chair. The postcard falls from his hand, drifts to the floor in slow motion, turning: moose, words, moose, wordsâ€"until it lands, the carefully printed words facing up, the last thing he sees before losing consciousness: Dismantled A Novel . Copyright © by Jennifer McMahon . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.