The Motion of Puppets by Keith Donohue

[gilda_elise]

In the Old City of Québec, Kay Harper falls in love with a puppet in the window of the Quatre Mains, a toy shop that is never open. She is spending her summer working as an acrobat with the cirque while her husband, Theo, is translating a biography of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Late one night, Kay fears someone is following her home. Surprised to see that the lights of the toy shop are on and the door is open, she takes shelter inside.

The next morning Theo wakes up to discover his wife is missing. Under police suspicion and frantic at her disappearance, he obsessively searches the streets of the Old City. Meanwhile, Kay has been transformed into a puppet, and is now a prisoner of the back room of the Quatre Mains, trapped with an odd assemblage of puppets from all over the world who can only come alive between the hours of midnight and dawn. The only way she can return to the human world is if Theo can find her and recognize her in her new form. So begins a dual odyssey: of a husband determined to find his wife, and of a woman trapped in a magical world where her life is not her own.

Having read and enjoyed both The Stolen Child, and The Boy Who Drew Monsters, I was looking forward to the author’s latest work. Unfortunately, my reaction to it was closer to how I reacted to Angels of Destruction. A decent read with what should have been an intriguing plot. Mysterious, with a touch of horror. But somehow the mystery, while there, is muted, the characters not sharply enough drawn to make a real impression.

Perhaps instead of a novel, this should have been a short story, because the story is necessarily padded with Theo’s frantic search for his wife. And with all the clues and false starts, with all the heartbreak that Theo goes through, the book’s conclusion was a huge disappointment. The set-up, Kay for the first time being in the company of a large number of puppets just as Theo is about to rescue her, seemed to push coincidence. While I realize that it was a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, I had hoped for a happier ending.




Mount TBR 2017 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Lost Girls
2. Hillbilly Elegy
3. Our Revolution
4. Requiem for Athens
5. Dark Angels
6. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
7. The Last Kingdom
8. The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son and a 50 Year Search
9. And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
10. Now Face to Face
11. Our Endless Numbered Days
12.Dean and Me: (A Love Story)
13. This Changes Everything
14. Richard III and the Murder in the Tower
15. The Apocalypse
16. The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999
17. The Snow Child
18. Stonehenge
19. Royal Blood: King Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes
20. To the Bright Edge of the World
21. How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends
22. The Hollow Man
23. The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction
24. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
25. In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China's Ascent in the Next Decade
26. The Glorious Cause
27. The Motion of Puppets

Comments

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

It's such a shame when a book fails to live up to expectations, but well done for staying with it and finishing it!

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Well, it wasn't the worst book I've read. :-) Actually, with just a few changes, it probably would have been pretty good. Of course, I hated the ending, so I suppose no changes would have help enough!

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

Thanks, as always, for the tip! Sounds like a book I'll want to miss.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. :-) I think it's probably for the best. *g*