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Summary
Summary
"A juicy thriller" ( Entertainment Weekly ) · "Absorbing" ( USA Today ) · "Dark and thoughtful" ( Washington Post) · "Gratifying" ( Wall Street Journal ) · "Sun-soaked noir" ( LA Review of Books )
A spellbinding novel of psychological suspense that follows a young archivist's obsession with her subject's mysterious death as it threatens to destroy her fragile grasp on sanity.
When the famed photographer Miranda Brand died mysteriously at the height of her career, it sent shock waves through Callinas, California. Decades later, old wounds are reopened when her son Theo hires the ex-journalist Kate Aitken to archive his mother's work and personal effects.
As Kate sorts through the vast maze of material and contends with the vicious rumors and shocking details of Miranda's private life, she pieces together a portrait of a vibrant artist buckling under the pressures of ambition, motherhood, and marriage. But Kate has secrets of her own, including a growing attraction to the enigmatic Theo, and when she stumbles across Miranda's diary, her curiosity spirals into a dangerous obsession.
A seductive, twisting tale of psychological suspense, Take Me Apart draws readers into the lives of two darkly magnetic young women pinned down by secrets and lies. Sara Sligar's electrifying debut is a chilling, thought-provoking take on art, illness, and power, from a spellbinding new voice in suspense.
Author Notes
Sara Sligar is an author and academic based in Los Angeles, where she teaches English and creative writing as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's in History from the University of Cambridge. Her writing has been published in McSweeney's , Quartz , The Hairpin , and other outlets. Take Me Apart is her first novel.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Sligar's perceptive debut follows two women who appear collected on the surface but silently endure struggles. After 30-year-old Kate Aitken loses her copyediting job at a New York newspaper amid a disbelieved sexual harassment complaint against her superior, she moves to Northern California to take on a temporary archivist position, where she's tasked with organizing the personal papers of photographer Miranda Brand, whose death two decades earlier was ruled a suicide. Supervised by Miranda's adult son, Theo, Kate spends hours sifting through letters, receipts, and prints, and begins to suspect Miranda was murdered. As she builds her case, sneaking around to interview locals who knew the artist, Kate develops feelings for Theo and his two young children, and begins to shut out anything not involving the Brands. Alternating between chapters focusing on Kate and epistolary documents by the tormented Miranda, Sligar reveals Miranda's unraveling throughout her brilliant career as she labors with parenthood and life with a manipulative husband. Though the novel falters somewhat in its home stretch, Sligar shows off a keen ear for dialogue, and Kate and Miranda hold interest. With a cool style and fast pace, Sligar achieves a propulsive exploration of these ambitious women's inner turbulence in response to an abusive man in each of their lives. (Apr.)
Kirkus Review
An ex-journalist falls into a churning vortex of dark secrets when she's hired to archive a famous photographer's personal effects. In 2017, after a harrowing incident ruined 30-year-old Kate Aitken's journalism career, she's eager to leave New York for sunny California and the idyllic little hamlet of Callinas, where her sweet but nosy Aunt Louise and Uncle Frank will put her up while she archives the tangible remains of controversial photographer Miranda Brand's life and work, a gig they hooked her up with. Miranda's husband, Jake, a painter, has recently died, leaving their son, Theo, with a hoarder's paradise of letters, documents, and possibly even a few of Miranda's viscerally intimate photos, which would be worth a fortune. Kate's first meeting with the enigmatic Theo, who's recently been divorced, is tense, but Theo's two small children, Jemima and Oscar, dull his sharp edges, and Kate soon becomes so immersed in her work that returning to Louise and Frank's home every evening is akin to waking from a fever dream. And they're eager for details. Miranda's death at 37 was ruled a suicide, but questions remain, and rumors, such as then 11-year-old Theo's possible culpability, persist. Kate, bound by a nondisclosure agreement, must remain silent but wonders if Miranda might have actually been murdered. When Kate discovers Miranda's diary, which often reads like dark poetry, she begins to feel an uneasy kinship with the artist, whose life was fractured by domestic violence, mental illness, and the inexorable demands of fame, motherhood, and the creative process. Kate's obsessive inquiry into Miranda's death and her growing attraction to Theo soon threaten to unravel the delicate threads of her new life and her increasingly precarious state of mind. Kate and Miranda are vividly rendered, and an entire novel could easily be crafted out of Miranda's fascinating diary, letters, and other ephemera, snippets of which are sprinkled liberally throughout. Sligar delivers an intriguing mystery while tackling big themes, especially sexism and the societal restraints placed on women's bodies and minds. The results are spellbinding. A raw and sophisticated debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Fleeing crisis in New York, Kate takes a job in Northern California, archiving the personal collections of photographer Miranda Brand, who was known for her often gruesome self-portraits and who died by suicide decades earlier. With her neat-freak tendencies, Kate is a natural fit for the monumental mess of the job and takes to it well, despite locals' warnings, and endless curiosity about the mysterious Brands. There's even a rumor that Theo, Miranda's son and Kate's boss, actually killed Miranda when he was just a boy. Before long, Kate is snooping in the house beyond Theo's clearly set boundaries even as she grows increasingly fond of him. Interspersed with Kate's chapters are Miranda's documents, including the diary Kate wasn't supposed to find--and in which she believes the truth lies. As the dual narrative unfolds, the two women's traumas come into focus, as do their similarities as women doggedly pursuing their work while wrestling with mental illness and straining under the weight of powerful men. Sligar handles her intricately structured story's threads with delicacy in this impressive, suspenseful debut.
Library Journal Review
Years after celebrated photographer Miranda Brand died unexpectedly, upending her California town, her son Theo asks former journalist Kate Aitken to create an archive of his mother's work. Miranda supposedly cracked under the strain of balancing work and family, but soon Kate must navigate nasty rumors about what really happened, her attraction to Theo, and her growing obsession with Miranda, fueled by her discovery of a diary that could explain everything. A debut that's starting to buzz.
