Book Review: The Uninvited – Liz Jensen
[image error] A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother’s neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry. Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger’s Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider’s fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh’s Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh’s Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father. Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.
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Review: The Uninvited (2013)
Hesketh Lock is an anthropologist with remarkable talents. He isn’t good with relationships but he’s incredibly good at spotting and analysing behavioural patterns. Therefore, when he’s called to investigate corporate cases of whistle-blowing in Taiwan and sabotage in Sweden, he’s looking for the individuals’ reasons for their actions. What he finds is something far more sinister, wide-reaching and difficult to analyse, as it seems that children across the world are embracing violence. Hesketh needs to rise above his natural inclination towards the logical, as the world around him becomes increasingly chaotic.
The Uninvited is an incredibly compelling read. Originally it feels like a mystery to be solved but as things develop the novel takes on an almost apocalyptic feel, raising many questions about our approach to life, overpopulation, the damage we do as a species. Casting Hesketh in the role of the main character adds an extraordinary twist that prevents this from being ‘another dystopian novel with a sexy hero’. Hesketh is good looking, smart, intuitively analytical but he is not a typical hero. He has Asperger’s Syndrome and this means he is not intuitively emotive or able to pick up ‘people signals’ easily. That said, this is also the reason he is a remarkable character in many other ways, such as his ability to be rational. He is also a wonderful step-father, showing a real tenderness towards his step-son, even when he becomes violent. He is not ‘a robot made of meat’ – a phrase that comes up repeatedly throughout the novel, having being cruelly levelled at Hesketh by his ex.
The Uninvited is wonderfully written with a great array of characters, situations and plot points. The ending was unexpected but touchingly satisfying. I read this in two sittings and enjoyed it immensely.
Verdict: 4/5
(Book source: Netgalley)
Book Review: The Uninvited – Liz Jensen | Thank you for reading Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave
