HIDDEN
Posted by: Gary Niebuhr
My monthly crime fiction book discussion group has just completed Paul Jaskunas’s Hidden, the only novel written by this fine writer. There is a reader’s guide for this novel at http://www.simonandschuster.net/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=507650&agid=10
This was a challenging book for my group to read because the narrator is a tad unreliable. She is Maggie Wilson, the former wife of Nate Duke. Readers hear her voice in 1996 when she first marries Nate, struggling within her marriage until he bashes her skull open and leaves her for dead. The second voice in the book is also Maggie’s, but now it is six years later when it is revealed that perhaps another man is guility of the crime for which Maggie jailed Nate.
I love watching my book group struggle with their frustration over the facts when they are delivered by an unreliable narrator. The trick for a book discussion leader is not to let this frustration boil over into dislike for the book. Remember to keep the focus on the narrator, not the author.
Less about the crime and more about interpersonal relationships, this book should appeal to all book discussion groups.
