Résumé
Résumé
He thought he knew everything about her until she went missing.
Before she disappeared, Alexandra Southwood lived an average, happy life: devoted to her wonderful husband, Marc, and caring for her two beautiful daughters. But now, held in a room against her will, Alexandra is forced to think about all she's lost, and imagine how Marc and her daughters are coping in the wake of her disappearance. She's shown news clips of Marc, desperately appealing to the public for information on her whereabouts. She tortures herself with visions of her family's devastated new reality. And as she envisions Marc's distress, she can't help but remember their courtship, their marriage--all that he saved her from and all that they've built together.
Marc's pain is visceral. He thinks of nothing but her. Even when the police discover Alexandra's bloody belongings by the river, turning their missing-persons case into a murder investigation, he cannot accept that she is lost to him. He shifts from total despair to frantic action, embarking on his own journey through the dark maze of secrets she kept and passions he never understood. Following a trail that leads him to find answers to questions he never meant to ask, he's forced to confront how frighteningly little he's grasped about the woman he loves.
EXHIBIT ALEXANDRA is a shocking psychological portrait, an original and unrelenting thriller that ultimately proves how unknowable even those closest to us can be.
Critiques (5)
Critique du Publishers Weekly
"A lot of what I'm writing almost definitely never happened. I wasn't there, obviously. I was missing." So says Alexandra Southwood, a University of York art history lecturer who has vanished. Early on, British author Bell signals that her provocative debut thriller-centering on Alexandra and Marc, her husband, who refuses to stop searching for her-isn't going to be just another missing person mystery. But the full extent of her audacity only becomes evident toward the end of this ingenious optical illusion, which may leave some readers gasping in admiration and others angry at being played. The more the devastated Marc learns about the woman to whom he's been married for years, all the while struggling to comfort and maintain some semblance of normalcy for the couple's two young daughters, the more he's forced to face the stomach-churning prospect that he may never really have known her at all. On one level a gripping page-turner and on another a disturbing exploration of identity, art, and decency, Bell's daring performance can't be ignored. Agent: Marilia Savvides, Peters Fraser & Dunlop (U.K.). (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Critique de Booklist
Marc Southwood, along with his two young daughters, is devastated when his wife, Alexandra, vanishes during her evening commute. Marc's insistence that Alexandra is in danger is confirmed when police find her blood-soaked belongings abandoned on a riverbank. Responding to rumors of Alexandra's marital discontent, and questioning the absence of her passport, detectives focus suspicion on Marc. In contrast, Alexandra's interspersed accounts of what happened support Marc's claims that the Southwoods remain deeply in love. But their story begins to prickle with hints of resentment as Bell gradually chronicles the couple's life together, from Alexandra's impulsive abandonment of her spot in an elite Chicago art program to remain with Marc in York, England, to the dramas of their growing family. Furthering the growing sense of unease, letters from Alexandra's friend Amelia, a famous performance artist, reveal Marc's desperation for Alexandra's attention and her unsettling pathological determination to cross any lines to further her art. A moody, gut-wrenching tale of domestic ennui, feminism, and identity, recommended for literary-thriller devotees and book groups.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2018 Booklist
Critique du Guardian
With The Kremlins Candidate (Michael Joseph, £12.99), former CIA operative Jason Matthews has written a provocative and timely novel exploring the notion of Russian influence in the USs corridors of power. Admiral Audrey Rowland is set to be the next director of the CIA a useful appointment for the Kremlin, as she is a mole working for Russia. Rowland, however, has been sexually compromised in the past by Dominika Egorova, a US asset amid Russias spooks, whom Putin favours to head his foreign intelligence service. And Dominikas exposure is inevitable if Rowland becomes CIA director. Dominika and her lover, CIA agent Nate Nash, find themselves in very dangerous waters. Politically, Matthews writing leans too far to the right for my taste, but the spycraft is utterly convincing (unsurprising given his intelligence background) and the urgent thriller mechanics are employed persuasively. The characterisation, though, lacks nuance Putin comes across like a Roger Moore-era Bond villain. Undisputed king of the Icelandic thriller Arnaldur Indriðason is enjoying an Indian summer with such books as The Shadow Killer (Harvill Secker, £14.99, translated by Victoria Cribb). We first met Detective Flóvent dour in manner, as befits Nordic sleuths in The Shadow District, and the pared-down style of that book is replicated here. Reykjavik, 1941: the body of a travelling salesman is discovered in a basement, murdered by a bullet from a Colt 45. The city is in chaos as the British hand over to the Americans, and the relations between servicemen and local women are a headache for the authorities. Flóvent is under intense pressure to solve the case before a pending visit by Churchill; the screws are tightened by the fact that the British appear to be involved in the murder. And there is another disturbing element in the investigation medical experiments on Icelandic children a decade earlier. There are echoes of the baroque flourishes in earlier books such as Jar City, but Indriðason is an altogether more austere writer these days. Still, he has not lost an iota of his authority. Weve had hordes of unreliable female narrators recently, but there is still sterling work being done in this nigh-exhausted genre. Exhibit Alexandra (Michael Joseph, £12.99), an astutely written, complex debut by Natasha Bell, presents the modern family as a powder keg of deception and lies. Mark is devastated by the disappearance of his beloved wife, Alex. Yorkshire police discover clothing covered in blood, but offer little help and his own investigations uncover some murky and perplexing secrets. Counterintuitively, the novel is entirely narrated by Alex, who may or may not be in captivity, guessing at how her husband is reacting to her loss. Another theme is the conflict between life and art Alex is a performance artist, which may lead the reader to some rash conclusions. Even seasoned genre aficionados will be surprised by the blind alleys we are taken down in this assured outing. British author Joseph Knox took eight years to write his debut Sirens, which swept all before it. Can his follow-up, The Smiling Man (Doubleday, £12.99), overcome the dreaded second novel syndrome? We are once again in a Manchester that frequently seems like an anteroom to hell. In a disused hotel, The Palace, detectives Waits and Sutcliffe encounter the eponymous smiler, a corpse with every identifying mark, including teeth and fingerprints, obliterated. But as Waits reconstructs the fragments of the dead mans life, there is a sinister enemy scrutinising his own. A series of ever more terrifying encounters are in store. Knoxs first novel was pedal-to-the-floor stuff, and this is even more powerful. One thing is sure: Knox is no one-hit wonder. While Jeffrey Archers publishers promote him as the worlds greatest storyteller, discerning readers might argue that the title belongs to Robert Goddard, whose unshowy command of narrative has never faltered over a lengthy career. Panic Room (Bantam, £18.99) takes us to an abandoned mansion on a Cornish cliff, where Blake, a reclusive young woman with a chequered past, is house sitting. She discovers the houses steel-lined panic room when a variety of unsavoury individuals come looking for missing owner Harkness, a rogue Big Pharma specialist. The latters dark secrets are to become a pressing concern for Blake. This is a tense read, full of characteristic Goddard twists. More scabrous fare is on offer in The Bone Keeper by Liverpudlian-Italian writer Luca Veste (Simon & Schuster, £7.99), which begins with four children entering a disused tunnel haunted by a local bogeyman known as the Bone Keeper. Only three will emerge, with DC Louise Henderson obliged to unearth the grim truth behind a legend. As ever with Veste, this is uncompromising material an edgy synthesis of horror and crime that is not for the squeamish. - Barry Forshaw.
Critique de Kirkus
A husband, horrified at his beloved wife's disappearance, begins to question their entire marriage, and his very reality, in Bell's assured debut.Alexandra and Marc Southwood have a wonderful marriage of 13 years and two beautiful little girls, Charlotte and Lizzie. When Alex doesn't come home one night, Marc is flummoxed. The North Yorkshire Police aren't immediately concerned, but when she hasn't returned a day later and they uncover her bloody clothing, Marc fears the worst. As the police investigate, they turn up shocking things that Marc never knew about Alex, leading him to do some investigating of his own. The book is narrated entirely by Alex: she makes it clear that what she's writing, presumably while in captivity, are guesses about Marc's actions based on how well she knows him as well as her access to things like a recording of Marc's phone call to the police and his credit card statement; she also gives us glimpses into the early days of their marriage. Interspersed with Alex's narration are letters from Amelia Heldt, an old friend and performance artist in New York who expresses an undeniable yearning for Alex. Bell paints a convincing portrait of a woman struggling with society's tendency to put a man's needs and desires over those of women and the guilt that accompanies a mother's longing for fulfillment outside of marriage and children. Alex is passionate and complex, and her almost aggressive idealism can grow tiresome, but her yearning to be something "more" is palpable, leading her to blur the lines between life and art. For readers into controversial performance art, which Alex especially admires, and art in general, there's a lot to chew on, but even if not, the truth behind Alex's disappearance is a doozy, and the finale is satisfying while offering plenty of food for thought. Is Alex an unreliable narrator? Of course she is, but this is no bait and switch. Bell gives us all the clues and dares us to follow them to the shocking end.This smart, mirror maze of a thriller bristles with sharp edges, twisting familiar Gone Girl themes into Bell's own intense creation. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Critique du Library Journal
Marc and Alexandra Southwood had been married for 13 years and had two daughters when Alexandra vanished on her way to work. Police find her bicycle and lots of blood on the river path but no trace of Alexandra. Absent a body, Marc believes that she is alive, rejects police evidence to the contrary, and begins a compulsive, hopeless search for his wife. Meanwhile, from a captive location, Alexandra has nothing to do but think and worry as she is regularly fed and shown footage of Marc on the news. The flashbacks on marriage and discovered correspondence from Alexandra's fellow art student Amelia allow the narrator to provoke fascinating discussions on the meaning of life and loss, of aesthetic concerns and real issues, and on the value of art and the meaning of perception. Katherine -McEwan's reading, with British and American accents as appropriate, brings the characters to life. VERDICT A solid psychological novel; highly recommended for adult fiction/mystery collections.-Cliff Glaviano, formerly with Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.