A Brief Lunacy

By: Cynthia Thayer

Narrated by: Various

With her acclaimed novel A Certain Slant of Light, Cynthia Thayer dazzled critics with her subtle grace and lyrical prose. Now this masterful storyteller brings her prodigious literary gifts to a very different kind of novel–a haunting edge-of-the-seat thriller that begins with a simple act of kindness and ends in a scene of escalating violence in a secluded Maine cabin.

The stranger arrived on a cool October evening. Jessie and Carl invited the stranded young man into their cabin, fed him supper, and let him spend the night. The next morning he repays their kindness by taking them prisoner in their own home.

Who is this man who calls himself Jonah? Why does he seem to know everything about them? What is his connection to their troubled, missing daughter, Sylvie? As Jonah’s behavior grows increasingly erratic and frightening, Jessie and Carl are trapped in a single day of brutality and shattering revelations that will test the limits of their sanity and their will to survive.©2005 Cynthia Thayer; (P)2005 Books On Tape

A Brief Lunacy

I'm sorry, I truly thought the story was capable of being engaging and interesting but this book really, really needed an editor. Plenty of inconsistencies and sometimes there was simply too much information. The characters said so much inside their heads, and most of it was repetitive and plenty of it was completely unnecessary.

A Weekend with Jessie and Carl

A Brief Lunacy starts slow and finishes at a snail's pace. Ms. Edris's reading is at times even difficult to listen to. I found myself caught in an ongoing debate. Was it lame writing or limp reading that made this book so difficult? The writing is rather simplistic, at times even dull though the story line evolves into an interesting tale. It finishes weakly, leaving Sylvie somewhere out there, still struggling. Ms. Edris struggles to try to
express affect as she reads and never seems to get with it. Carl becomes the most interesting character in contrast to Jessie who never really seemed real. I cannot, overall, recommend this book to anyone.