The Retreat by Mari.Reiza
Coming of Age /
Psychological Thriller
About the Book:
An uncomfortable but fascinating
ripening journey.
Ahmed has abandoned her. Nadia is gone the way Isabelle did
before, her two fallen warriors. But Marie can still hear His voice clearly.
A deep call for justice takes hold in an impressionable teenage
girl from a recently broken family during a religious retreat; what happens
next will mark her life for years to come.
the Retreat is a story of men playing God, of hurt that doesn’t
find its way out.
Find it on Amazon
About the Setting
The story moves back and forth in time and place. From Brussels
during Marie's early teenage years with her mother and siblings, to Zermatt
where she's sent with the nuns on a fated ski trip. Years later in London,
Marie is attempting to find a job and build a life with Ahmed who she met on a
plane, when she's lured to a Victorian bathhouse and meets troubled Nadia. But
the book begins and ends after Marie's London years, back in her natal
Bordeaux. There Marie strikes the final blow in her prodigal daughter's return
of sorts.
About the Author:
Mari Reiza was born in Madrid in 1973. She has worked as an
investment research writer and management consultant for twenty years in
London. She studied at Oxford University and lives off Portobello Road with her
husband and child.
Find Mari at:
My review:
With a rich unexpectedness of language and frequent unconventional
usages, this is a book that is sometimes hard to follow with its leaps back and
forth in Marie’s life. First showing us her present somewhat unlikeable self,
the author then justifies her by going into Marie’s teenage years, desertion by
the father she loved, moving schools, distance from her mother and sisters, and
hints at something awful which Marie did to ostracise herself more completely
from much of her family. The author is good at observing vile people and ordinary
awkward social situations as she jumps from perspective to perspective in, for
example, a gathering of teenage girls urged to look for religious messages in Dirty Dancing. The book is full of
sexual references so if that’s not your kind of thing I’d suggest avoiding it.
The end is shocking and you’re left wondering if you have misinterpreted the whole
book.
No comments:
Post a Comment