Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Juliet Porteus, the narrator of this astonishingly adroit first novel, prefers technology to metaphor, and science to literature, which makes her the black sheep in her artistically inclined London family. She goes to Glasgow to study veterinary science, and falls under the spell of her bohemian roommates: Petruchio, a seemingly asexual Italian pharmaceutical researcher who pads around the apartment spouting his nihilistic views, and drama students Billy and Chris. It's Billy's friend Kerry, however, an elfin actress with a prevaricating soul, with whom Juliet drifts into an intense love affair. Juliet has a lot on her hands, since Kerry is an irrepressibly promiscuous and alarmingly self-destructive young woman. When Kerry returns from visiting theatrical agents in London and tells Juliet she is pregnant, Juliet is at her wit's end with jealousy and worry. There's more crisis on the horizon, when Juliet finds the corpse of a woman dressed in a vampire costume at the foot of the apartment stairs. Shaken, she goes out to get cigarettes and to figure out what to do; when she gets back, the corpse has vanished. Was it a hallucination? If so, why are Kerry and Petruchio acting so suspiciously? The boho coterie splits up, with Petruchio going back to Italy, where he self-destructs, as Juliet discovers by accident. Juliet decides she must find Kerry to discover what really happened. McGregor's story never stops surprising with playful, gruesome twists; the consummately strange and complicated characters consistently illuminate this existential mystery with their electrifying shadow sides. This small masterpiece, like John Banville's The Book of Evidence, offers in its central mystery not simply a puzzle to solve, but an existential test of scruple that transforms McGregor's supple characters. Agent, Gelfman-Schneider Literary Agency. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In a Glasgow flat, scientists Juliet and Petruchio and actress Kerry share a reckless student life of drugs, alcohol, sex, jealousy, and deception. Juliet discovers a body in their cupboard, but the body disappears, and her roommates' bizarre, secretive behavior convinces her that they are involved. Then Kerry's agents disappear amid rumors of sordid sexual orgies, and Juliet becomes obsessed with finding the truth behind both mysteries. The riddle of Schrdinger's Cat echoes throughout Juliet's search. If a cat, placed in a box with a radioactive atom, has a 50-50 chance of being killed when the box is opened, is the cat alive or dead? Or is it neither? Or both? Are the "facts" Juliet uncovers truths or lies or one and the same? In this first novel, McGregor deftly weaves into her plot Schrdinger's theory that polar opposites can exist, but the characters are not very likable until the book's end. Recommended for large public libraries or large mystery collections.ÄKaren Anderson, Superior Court Law Lib., Phoenix (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The normal chaos of college years takes a bizarre twist in this morbid debut laced with quantum theory (the Schrîdinger angle) from McGregor: a vanishing corpse wreaks havoc on a flat full of students in Glasgow, leaving only one to know the whole sad story. Eminently rational Juliet is the narrator. Born of an artistic, romantic London family, she's studying in Glasgow to be a veternarian when she meets the dark, neurotic Petruchio, a pharmeceuticals researcher and Valium addict with whom she decides to share an apartment. The others who share their rent are drama students, and one of them brings along his would-be girlfriend, Kerry--a diminutive, hard-drinking, chainsmoking Irish madwoman. She and Juliet soon find themselves involved, and with a lover's pride Juliet watches Kerry draw critical praise for her lead role in Antigone. A pub encounter with a top London agent, however, quickly takes Kerry from her shining moment of success down into a realm of darkness and deceit, with Petruchio being her confidant and Juliet the primary recipient of her fabrications. Kerry announces she's pregnant, claiming it's the result of a random encounter. But when Juliet finds a dead woman in vampire's garb in a closet under their stairs, only to have the body disappear, and when she later hears the news that both the agent and his wife have vanished, she's pushed to her rational limits, suspecting that her lover is involved but not knowing how. The household splits up, as do Kerry and Juliet; Petruchio goes home to Italy and kills himself; Juliet drops out of school; and Kerry drops out of sight, then reappears just before the birth of her child, eventually telling Juliet the awful truth in a grim finale. A genuine downer of a story, though too transparent as a mystery, with the quantum connection ultimately revealed as inconsequential. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
