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Iain banks bids us farewell with 'the quarry'.

Ellah Allfrey

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At the time of his death from cancer in June, Iain Banks had written 27 books. He was the rarest of creatures, a writer acclaimed (by critics and fans alike) not just for his literary fiction, but also for the science fiction novels he wrote as Iain M. Banks. It is hard to think of another author who crossed genres and melded audiences with a comparable level of success.

In both his incarnations he aimed his wry wit and boundless imagination at contemporary society, creating sometimes disturbing characters whose recognizable humanity – and this includes the spaceship minds, too – ensure a popularity and appeal that made him one of the greatest writers of his generation.

In his last interview, Banks confessed that he wished The Quarry was not his last book. His choice would have been to end with a final installment of the science fiction series that he wrote as Iain M. Banks, featuring the Culture, a far-future intergalactic utopia that has evolved beyond the demands and constraints of monetary economy.

The Quarry is set firmly in our own world, and narrated by Kit, an awkward, computer-obsessed youth who early on acknowledges his own weirdness. Kit considers his true existence to be the many hours he spends online, playing an interactive game called HeroSpace . But real life is much tougher than that fantasy land of complicated codes of behavior, warriors and artificial intelligences.

When Iain Banks died in June at the age of 59, the Telegraph newspaper described him as "two of our finest writers." Ray Charles Redman hide caption

When Iain Banks died in June at the age of 59, the Telegraph newspaper described him as "two of our finest writers."

He lives in a crumbling house on the edge of a quarry with his father, Guy. The book opens with the impending visit of Guy's college roommates who are coming to pay their last respects — and to search for a missing videotape of a film they made together as students. The contents of the tape are potentially damaging: They all agree that it cannot fall into the wrong hands. Guy, at this point, is living out his last weeks; he is in pain, heavily medicated and cannot remember what he did with the tape. Or so he says.

The hunt for the incriminating film during one long, sometimes drug and alcohol-fueled weekend takes up almost the entire action of the book. The reunited group cannot, in truth, still be called friends: There is Hol, the acerbic film critic whose career has stalled; warring couple Rob and Alison, who have sold their souls to the corporate world; anxious, do-gooding ex-social worker Pris; Haze, who exists in a drugged fug; and Paul, a lawyer with political ambitions.

They've long since lost whatever it was they had in common years ago, life has disappointed some of them; others carry the dissatisfaction of not having lived the lives their youth promised. And as a group, they embody many of the social ills of contemporary Britain — a lack of political engagement, the failure of idealism, dissatisfaction and a preoccupation with amassing wealth. These are themes familiar in much of Banks' fiction, especially his later novels. Guy himself, the center of their attention, is facing death with a fury against the world that he hurls indiscriminately at anyone within his reach, but mostly at his son.

Kit is an engaging narrator. His wit is bone-dry and his adolescent preoccupations provide needed relief from the ugliness and despair of the adults around him. He's constantly trying to work out how to moderate his conversation and behavior to acceptable normality; has inappropriate sexual longings for the much older, and not obviously attractive Hol; and he's woefully dogged in his determination to overcome his disgust and attend to the intimate physical needs of a father who does not show him much affection.

If this wasn't enough for an awkward young man with a house full of unhappy, bickering guests to contend with, there's also his need to find out the identity of his mother. Guy has made up several stories through the years — some more outrageous than others — and none of the friends gathered will discuss the subject.

Banks was reportedly well into writing this book when a visit to the doctor for persistent back pain led to a diagnosis of cancer — a plot twist so cruel it seems beyond even his imaginative genius. Guy's rants against his disease, and the unhelpful, unasked for exhortations to try alternative remedies or positive thinking, are poignantly eloquent.

When the tape is indeed finally discovered, the tension explodes into a violent free-for-all of truth-telling that shows off Banks' keen eye for character and dialogue, and a sense of just what will hit home with lasting effect. There is anger here: at death, at betrayal, at society. But here too is Banks' genius: At no point does the reader feel distant from the characters. In the last chapters of the book Kit observes that "[life is] a process, like many others, but short enough for those of us with the time and interest to observe it and draw our own comparisons, if we're that way inclined."

This is Banks' final gift to us. While The Quarry is not his best book, and may not even make it onto my list of his top three, it doesn't disappoint. One may dislike some or all of the characters — and there is much to dislike — but there is no escaping the persistent nag of recognition.

Ellah Allfrey is deputy editor of Granta magazine. She lives in London.

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by Damon Galgut ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2005

Galgut’s prose has a spare beauty, suggesting volcanic emotions held rigorously in check. A remarkable achievement.

This fine, bleak tale about a fugitive’s crack-up was written ten years ago, while South African Galgut’s The Good Doctor (2004) made the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize.

A very tall white man is walking along an empty road across the veldt. Unnamed, the man is a fugitive, although from what we don’t know. He has managed to lose the police helicopters. A car passes. The driver, a minister on his way to a new job in a township, gives him a ride and buys him breakfast. In his way, the minister is as desperate as the fugitive. When he propositions the fugitive, the fugitive kills him with a rock, then buries him in a quarry. He drives to the township, claims to be the minister, and is taken in by the woman in the mission house. A complication ensues when the car is burgled and one of the thieves, Valentine, is arrested, while his brother, Small, is found hiding in the quarry, alongside the corpse. The police captain, Mong, has the two put on trial for murder. The guilt-stricken fugitive confesses that he’s not the minister and takes to the road again. Valentine, too, is on the run, having escaped custody. A vigilante mob screams for vengeance and a solar eclipse adds an apocalyptic touch. Mong pursues the fugitive on foot, obsessively, across a parched landscape, and in this dance of death, the men’s identities seem to merge. The fugitive looks “haggard and mad and remarkable.” Mong is “ragged and reeking.” Valentine appears “crazed and messianic.” In the end, it scarcely matters that the fugitive is shot dead by Mong while Valentine survives, for we know that his fate will be as miserable as that of the dead man. The legal niceties of criminal punishment pale beside the solitary despair that these men cannot escape.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-8021-4161-7

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Black Cat/Grove

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004

LITERARY FICTION

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by Damon Galgut

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

More by Mark Z. Danielewski

by Mark Z. Danielewski

OF MICE AND MEN

by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936

Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.

Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936

ISBN: 0140177396

Page Count: 83

Publisher: Covici, Friede

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936

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by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden

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by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson

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The Quarry review – Iain Banks's last book contains a final irony

"If I'd known it was going to be my last book, I'd have been quite disappointed that I'm going out with a relatively minor piece."

The Quarry is about somebody dying. The terrible irony is that when he was writing this book, Iain Banks did not know that he was dying. In the event he died soon after publication, after writing close to 30 novels, some literary, some science-fiction and some gothic. His many admirers will miss him; perhaps they will agree that this is a relatively minor piece compared, say, with the sublime The Crow Road and The Wasp Factory .

While, by all accounts, Banks died with great courage and dignity, the central character, Guy, seen by his autistic son, Kit, is raging against the dying of the light. He is not just raging, he is voluble, vicious and foul-mouthed. His anger and his contempt are sprayed without discrimination on his friends on popular culture, even on his son.

The book centres on a long weekend at Guy's dilapidated house, soon to be sold to the adjoining quarry, convened by his friends as a farewell. These friends were all together at Bewford University, a fictional version of Durham. They represent a cross section of university graduates, but they seem to be emblematic rather than fully drawn. Their conversations quickly become tedious.

As Guy rants, his dutiful if odd – his own description – son is wonderfully solicitous towards him, even to the extent of wiping his bottom for him. The description of the final stages of his cancer are harrowing and unflinching, even unbearable.

The problem with the novel is that the friends from uni are not clearly differentiated, and their dialogue on this awful weekend doesn't ring true; it's relentlessly declamatory, aggressive and critical. As the weekend lurches on, the friends also attack one another woundingly, and, late in the book, literally. At times it's a sort of provincial Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Now in their mid-40s, they are all hellbent on recreating their halcyon student days; they drink huge amounts and they snort cocaine and light joints when they aren't drinking.

At university the friends made short films – one of them has gone on to be an impoverished freelance film critic – but their lives have not gone well. As one of them says, none of them would have chosen the lives they are now leading. They know that somewhere in Guy's house is an old video which they want to find because it contains some very compromising material, possibly pornographic. Paul, the most successful of the friends, gives Kit money to encourage him to find this tape. He is an aspirant politician, so he is particularly keen to have it destroyed.

Eighteen-year-old Kit is autistic; autism is perhaps a rather overdone device in contemporary fiction. Anyway, Kit plays war games on his computer constantly, has extremely rigorous routines around the house and is flustered – for example – if the front door bell rings more than once. has never told him who his mother is, and he suspects that one of the women present might be that mother. A virgin, Kit makes some awkward, and rebuffed, advances on one of the women. In fact as the voice of the novel, he is improbably articulate and his accounts of the weekend are numbingly prolix. Although this is some way from being in the first rank of of his books, Banks's many admirers will undoubtedly be grateful for the book and its occasional flashes of brilliance.

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"Few authors can blend the genuine fear generated by a sordid tale of true crime with evocative, three-dimensional characters, and mesmerizing prose like Jess Lourey. Calling it: The Quarry Girls will be one of the best books of the year." —Alex Segura, acclaimed author of Secret Identity, Star Wars Poe Dameron: Free Fall , and Miami Midnight

"Jess Lourey is a master of the coming-of-age thriller, and THE QUARRY GIRLS may be her best yet—as dark, twisty, and full of secrets as the tunnels that lurk beneath Pantown’s deceptively idyllic streets." —Chris Holm, Anthony Award winning author of The Killing Kind

The Quarry Girls

Killers hiding in plain sight. Small-town secrets. A girl who knows too much. From the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Unspeakable Things and Bloodline comes a nerve-twisting novel inspired by a shocking true crime.

Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.

Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears—the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.

Heather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can’t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger.

She also knows she’s next.

( The Quarry Girls initially included pages from Heather's diary, including her sketches of gag gift ads. While they never made it into the book, you can see them here . If you haven't yet read the book, they make a good companion piece while reading.)

BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

These insightful, provocative book club questions for THE QUARRY GIRLS were created by Nicholle Thery-Williams and Marisa Gothie of Bookends and Friends Book Club! ✨

In this book the year 1977 is a character. As society grappled with changes in gender roles and expectations how do we see this reflected in characters’ actions and reactions?

The 1970s were a decade of coming to grips with the upheavals of the 1960s. With the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate, the 1970s experienced a shift in trust and stability from the national government to local institutions. How was this reflected and how did this play out in the story?

If this story was to take place today, what effect would our 24-hour news cycle and social media saturation have on the characters’ perceptions and actions?

In this book one of the characters says, “Were they all hiding in plain sight, the monsters?” This has been a common theme in horror literature, challenging the notion that somehow “monsters” are different. In what ways do you think the character’s statement is supported or not supported in this story?

In the winter months, our characters live cloistered, in their own homes with their own families and their own secrets. When the sun returns, drawing them back outside, they'll spend weekends at festivals living their lives in the open. How does this dichotomy affect our characters’ self-perceptions and views of others?’

We often hear the question, “Am I my brothers’ keeper?” In this story, the characters ask that question by vacillating between observing what goes on and saying nothing. How does this orientation affect the bonds of community, where everyone knows but no one says?

In this story, gender roles are narrowly defined. The actions of young women are seen as frivolous and those of older women as scandalous, while boys will be boys and men will be men. How does the narrator’s place in that system affect how we view their voice and credibility?

How different would this story have been if it had been narrated in a male voice? How different would this story have been if the narrator had been a person in a position of authority or power?

As the characters’ life stories opened up and revealed more of who they are and why they are that way, did you find your views and sympathies evolve along with them?

What songs from the 1970s would you put on the soundtrack for this book? Who would you cast as the characters for this book? See less

"Lourey conveys the edgy, hungry, restlessness of teen girls with a touch of Megan Abbot, while steadily intensifying the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small 1977 Minnesota town where darkness snakes below the surface." —Loreth Anne White, Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Patient's Secret

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the quarry girls.

• About the Book

Killers hiding in plain sight. Small-town secrets. A girl who knows too much. From the Amazon Charts bestselling author of UNSPEAKABLE THINGS and BLOODLINE comes a nerve-twisting novel inspired by a shocking true crime.

Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.

Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears --- the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.

Heather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can’t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger.

She also knows she’s next.

Audiobook available; read by Stacey Glemboski, Melissa Redmond and Byron Wagner

The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey

• Publication Date: November 1, 2022
• Genres: Fiction , Psychological Suspense , Psychological Thriller , Suspense , Thriller
• Paperback: 335 pages
• Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
• ISBN-10: 1542034299
• ISBN-13: 9781542034296

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The Quarry Girls – The BOLO Books Review

by Kristopher | Oct 18, 2022 | Review

After writing a fun and successful cozy mystery series of twelve novels (each tied to one of the months), Jess Lourey shifted gears to write a collection of poignant crime fiction standalones inspired by true crimes that took place in and around her native Minnesota. Unlike many novels which contain true crime origins, Lourey is careful to make sure she is not sensationalizing the events and chooses to center her works on the victims – both those directly affected and those whose lives are altered simply by their proximity to such traumatic criminality – and in doing so, elicits empathy from the reader while successfully telling gripping and original narratives. The Quarry Girls is the latest of these true crime-inspired novels and it just might be Jess Lourey’s best work yet.

St. Cloud Minnesota in the late 1970s has the small-town rural feel parents seek out when looking for a place to raise their families, but some small towns also harbor secrets. Jess Lourey’s depiction of Pantown brings the area to life with all the vivid detail and menacing ambiance needed to keep the reader turning the pages. The town – like its citizens – always seems on the cusp of extinction, with secrets buried deep and danger around each corner.

When her friend Maureen fails to arrive at the party she promised to attend, Heather and her circle of friends all fear the worst, but no one else seems to care. After all, teens run away all the time. But when Heather and Brenda see something – something they can never tell anyone else – the trajectory of their lives are forever altered. As young girls around Pantown continue to go missing, Heather realizes that the safety of her younger sister lies squarely in her hands alone. And when Heather puts her mind to something, she never goes down without a fight.

What happens when children are forced to grow up too fast, when every adult around them fails in their duty to protect and comfort? The coming-of-age story for Heather is one of resilience, self-confidence, and skepticism; but it is also a warning for parents, a beacon to other young girls in distress, and a spotlight on society’s shortcomings.

Like Unspeakable Things and Bloodline , Jess Lourey’s The Quarry Girls is ultimately a morality tale – almost a dark fairy tale except that the plots are rooted in reality and the danger is all-too-real. The sad fact is that there is no shortage of past crimes to prompt Jess Lourey’s creative mind, but readers can rest easy knowing that this author will approach every idea with deep reverence for the victims and a goal of providing a healing and heartfelt journey – for both the characters and their readers – within the pages of some truly exceptional crime fiction.

BUY LINKS: The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey

Disclaimer: A print galley of this title was provided to BOLO Books by the author. No promotion was promised and the above is an unbiased review of the novel.

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Christopher Kügler

Reader • writer • author, book review: the quarry girls.

“Men in packs can do terrible things, things they wouldn’t have the hate to do alone. It’s no excuse, just something you should know.”

Just read THE QUARRY GIRLS by Jess Lourey. This book is intense. It’s also really good, so I definitely recommend you check it out. For me, an author of a high-octane spy thriller and a dark-as-hell dystopian thriller, this book kept me up at night. It’s menacing and mysterious… and explicit. The author has crafted a rich setting where she places a great set of characters. The story itself focuses on a fun group of teenage girls. Unfortunately, this book is about the violence and murder, and abuse that befalls upon them…

But the mystery is riveting, the prose is lovely, and the ending is memorable. Oh, and it’s inspired by a true story. So that’s terrifying. If this is your thing, definitely check it out.   You can purchase THE QUARRY GIRLS here . And you can find Jess Lourey here . As always, I’m open to book recommendations, so please leave them below!

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Who Was Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Really?

In “Once Upon a Time,” Elizabeth Beller examines the life and death of the woman who was best known for marrying John F. Kennedy Jr.

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By Louis Bayard

Louis Bayard’s novels include “Jackie & Me” and the forthcoming “The Wildes.”

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ONCE UPON A TIME: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, by Elizabeth Beller

One of the many reasons to wish that Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy were alive and well is that, without too much urging, she might have formed a sorority with Meghan Markle. They could have talked about what it’s like to be a woman thrust into a brutal family dynasty and a Hobbesian press ecosystem. Maybe they would have exchanged tips for dodging paparazzi. Maybe, over enough drinks, they would have asked each other if their husbands were worth all the trouble.

Sadly, we can only come at Bessette-Kennedy now through intermediaries. And none of them could be more ardent in their mission than Elizabeth Beller, whose unironically titled biography, “Once Upon a Time,” aims to make John F. Kennedy Jr.’s wife the princess she was meant to be. Squeezing bright memories from dozens of Bessette-Kennedy’s friends, acquaintances and family members, Beller lays down a yellow-brick road from her subject’s middle-class White Plains childhood to her tony Greenwich adolescence to her convivial semesters at Boston University to her V.I.P. sales job at Calvin Klein in New York.

Beller is there, too, when America’s most famous bachelor wandered in for a fitting. Boy and girl, helpless in their beauty, gazed upon each other. Boy asked for girl’s number. There followed “a haze of sultry dinners, dancing and walks.” But John F. Kennedy Jr. was in no hurry to settle down. He was on-and-off-dating a temperamental Hollywood actress, and even when he and Bessette-Kennedy did become an item, he didn’t introduce her to his mother, who then died before he could.

Their Georgia wedding was lovely, but the marriage was troubled. John’s energies were drawn away by the launch of George, his doomed magazine. His gregarious wife was a prisoner in her own home, thanks to an unhinged tabloid press. “If I don’t leave the house before 8 a.m.,” she told a friend, “they’re waiting for me. Every morning. They chase me down the street.”

The couple grew distant. They got into arguments. They went to couples therapy. But “Once Upon a Time” wants us to know that, through it all, they were meant to be. “They would love hard and they would fight hard,” one friend said, “but they were very much a couple.”

“They were soul mates,” Beller quotes George Plimpton as saying.

And through it all, apparently, Bessette-Kennedy never stopped being a golden girl. We’re told over and again how gorgeous and elegant she was, how smart and funny and kind. She loved kids, dogs, cats, old people. She had “abundant gifts to share.” She was “wild and vivid in a cautious and pale world.” She was “a revelation.”

The only remaining question: Why is this exercise in heroine worship emerging a full quarter-century after her death? Beller argues that Bessette-Kennedy’s legacy until now has been shaped by men, and she probably means one man in particular. Edward Klein’s 2003 pot-stirrer, “The Kennedy Curse,” helped cement the tabloid image of her as a difficult cokehead who showed up two hours late to her own wedding, severed a nerve in her husband’s wrist, fooled around with other men and, in one redolent phrase, snorted up with “a gaggle of gay fashionistas.”

Beller rebuts each charge as it comes, but with all respect to her advocacy, she seems to be litigating a case that has long since been settled out of court or, more poignantly, forgotten. What lingers, I fear, for anyone tasked with remembering Bessette-Kennedy’s name, is her haunting end: borne down in a Piper Saratoga six-seater piloted by her husband, with her sister at her side.

Ironic and fitting, then, that in recreating that fatal journey, Beller’s prose sparks to life. “They were flying through a darkness akin to that of a sensory-deprivation chamber, surface and sky indistinguishable. Only when John began to make multiple turns, climbing then descending, turning and descending again, might the sisters have noticed that it had been 20 minutes since they had seen the nebulous mainland lights, glimmering yet opaque.”

ONCE UPON A TIME : The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy | By Elizabeth Beller | Gallery | 352 pp. | $29.99

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A dewy-eyed look at the life and death of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy

Twenty-five years after her death in a plane crash, a new book, “Once Upon a Time,” delivers a cloying look into the life of JFK Jr.’s wife.

In 1996, Sotheby’s auctioned more than 5,500 items from the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who had died two years earlier. The winning bids shattered all presale estimates: A monogrammed silver tape measure went for $48,875, a faux-pearl necklace for $211,500. The four-day total topped an astonishing $34 million . “Most of the items were not exceptional works of art or craftsmanship, nor were they even from the White House era,” Elizabeth Beller writes in a new book. “They were all Jackie.”

The enduring romance and glamour of Camelot cannot be overstated. The Kennedys were the closest this country gets to a royal family, and Jackie’s beloved son — handsome, playful, adored — was America’s crown prince and most eligible bachelor. When John Jr. married Carolyn Bessette a few months after the auction, the fashion publicist was transformed into an international celebrity overnight.

They were a beautiful couple. She was a tall, elegant blonde with a cool reserve that complemented his effortless charm. Many people believed that one day John Jr. would become president, and she would be first lady. That dream ended tragically when John, Carolyn and her sister died in a plane crash in the summer of 1999.

Now, 25 years later, Beller has written a biography, “ Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy .” The writer, who never met Carolyn, very much wants her subject to be remembered as extraordinary in her own right, not as an ordinary young woman pulled into the Kennedy orbit. To underscore her point, the book opens with an author’s note: Beller says she wants to defend the “slanderous” rumors that Carolyn was shallow, difficult and manipulative, characterizations she attributes to a “dysfunctional culture,” the anti-feminist patriarchy and the media. Her decision to write this book “was not so much a choice as a compulsion.”

It’s fair to wonder if compulsion is the best starting point. A great biography is intimate but honest, compassionate but unflinching. Sigmund Freud believed that biographers were susceptible to transference — romanticizing and sanitizing the narrative in response to unconscious fantasies. At the very least, Beller stumbled into the classic rookie mistake: She fell in love with her subject and so could never see her objectively.

The result is an effusive, almost worshipful portrait of a modern-day princess, stripped of agency or nuance. In Beller’s telling, Carolyn is stunning, caring, brilliant, hilarious and passionate but surrounded and hounded by people who are jealous or simply cruel. Beller interviewed dozens of people — although not the Bessette or Kennedy inner circle, despite her efforts — and the memories are overwhelmingly positive. It’s not surprising that friends want to protect Carolyn’s legacy and diminish her flaws, but the book is a paean to a doomed goddess instead of a reflective examination of a woman thrust into a life she was unprepared for and ill-equipped to survive.

Carolyn’s star rose quickly. After graduating from Boston University in 1988 — a semester late because she was busy promoting local nightclubs — she landed a job as a saleswoman for Calvin Klein’s boutique in Boston. Soon she moved to Klein’s headquarters in New York. She was originally assigned to VIP clients and then became a public relations executive and a darling in Manhattan’s fashion and club scene.

In passage after passage, Carolyn is described as a muse, a mentor, dazzling yet unpretentious . Beller praises her subject as a “super empath” — someone exceptionally sensitive to the feelings of others. Never mind the friends who saw her throwing herself at her friends’ boyfriends. “It was a move at odds with her usually nurturing persona,” writes Beller, “but not necessarily with the fragility beneath the gentleness.”

Call it insecurity, call it vanity, call it a cry for help. Or don’t. Carolyn bragged that no man had ever dumped her. Beller argues that “it stands to reason” that Carolyn would have trouble trusting men because her parents had divorced when she was 8, and she was estranged from her father. (An armchair psychologist might call that unfair to her doting stepfather and to every daughter of divorce who doesn’t try to use friends’ boyfriends to soothe her ego.)

The problem, of course, is that this version of Carolyn has no flaws — or that any faults are uncharacteristic, or justified because of the actions of other people. This strips Carolyn of the capacity for self-awareness, maturity and growth, making everything that happened next a tragedy outside her control.

Myth has it that Carolyn and John met while jogging in Central Park. Beller writes that the two were introduced when he came into Calvin Klein’s headquarters in 1992, and they began a brief, turbulent romance. John broke up with her after receiving a letter from a friend claiming that she was a “user, partier, that she was out for fame and fortune.” Carolyn was down but not out: “She also knew, deep down, that this would not be the end,” a friend told Beller. “John was a prize and Carolyn had her eye on the ball.” Another said Carolyn wanted an “important life,” and she thought she could have that with John.

They renewed the romance in earnest two years later — shortly after Jackie died — and picked up where they left off: two people addicted to each other and the drama they constantly brought to the relationship. When he was an hour late for a dinner date, she threw a glass of wine in his face and stormed out. By early 1996, engaged and living together, the two were filmed having a huge fight in Washington Square Park. The tabloids had a field day; it was a massive embarrassment for John, who had just launched George magazine, and a realization for Carolyn that the spotlight was never turning off.

Whatever doubts they had were pushed aside: Their wedding in September — pulled off in secret — was a sensational fairy tale, complete with one of the most romantic photos in history. The groom was 35, the bride 30.

But two people can be deeply in love and wrong for each other. John, born into a rarefied world of suffocating fame and fortune, was earnest, loving, spoiled, careless, struggling with ADHD and dyslexia, and sensitive to any intellectual slight. He was accustomed to a world eager to give him whatever he wanted. Beller may describe Carolyn as generous, funny and thoughtful, but her heroine also comes across as spoiled, headstrong and insecure. Her insistence on living her life as she wished — including a husband who was an equal partner — was at odds with the man and history she married.

One of the many unexplored questions in this book is the naiveté on both John’s and Carolyn’s part about what was likely to happen when they married. They believed that the media interest would die after the wedding; it intensified. “John and Carolyn were woefully under-managed for their outsize life,” a friend of John’s told Beller. “They needed aides-de-camp. They needed security. And they should probably have moved away from that building.” But the couple continued to live in John’s downtown loft — with no doorman and one exit — where photographers could catch them coming and going.

Everything the newlyweds did in public was scrutinized: They were the undisputed stars at any gala they attended. Carolyn was hailed one of the most fashionable women in the world. But a ski trip to Bozeman, Mont., also made headlines when she wore boots with four-inch heels and the locals laughed at her. Beller attributes it to “jealousy or just plain cattiness — it was the age-old tradition of women turning on women.” So, not just the patriarchy.

Carolyn quit her job to be available for her husband, then found herself bored and resentful of all the people and things that demanded his time. She blamed the paparazzi for her unhappiness — and Beller concurs. John grew up with photographers and had a cordial relationship; Carolyn was never reconciled to the constant presence of cameras or the request for one smile. “No!” she told a Kennedy family friend. “I hate those bastards. I’d rather just scream and curse at them.” It became a vicious cycle — she was angry, the photos were angry, and Carolyn once even spat at a photographer. Perhaps had she lived longer she would have learned — like Princess Diana — to leverage her fame for good.

Maybe Carolyn was clinically depressed, but Beller doesn’t explore the question of mental health and the pressures of being a celebrity. She does say, near the end of the book, that Carolyn was prescribed antidepressants, and that by the spring of 1999 the marriage was in shambles and the couple were in counseling. “She was pretty angry,” said a longtime friend of the couple’s. “But, at a certain point, you have to slow down and ask yourself, ‘Do I want to be in constant outrage?’ Because you can’t grow in that state.”

John confided in friends that his wife refused to have sex with him and that he believed she was doing drugs. The persistent rumors that Carolyn had a problem with cocaine are left largely unexamined. Beller repeatedly says Carolyn never touched the stuff; she quotes one friend who says she “barely drank wine.” In the same vein, Carolyn’s alleged affairs are dismissed as mere friendships. John, on the other hand, may have been unfaithful, but his “infidelity came from pain.”

In July 1999, John persuaded Carolyn to accompany him to his cousin’s wedding at the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod. Her sister Lauren, who had brokered a reconciliation of sorts, flew along in John’s small plane with a planned drop-off on Martha’s Vineyard. The plane went down shortly after dark off the Massachusetts coast; there were no survivors.

In her epilogue, Beller asks whether any woman who married JFK Jr. would have elicited this obsession and tells herself no — Carolyn was “fascinating, intriguing, exasperating … a revelation.” For the rest of us, she is a cautionary tale, and this book a lesson in the perils of celebrity worship.

Once Upon a Time

The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy

By Elizabeth Beller

Gallery. 352 pp. $26.99

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In the working-class desert odyssey ‘Accordion Eulogies,’ Noé Álvarez searches for his grandfather

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Book Review

Accordion Eulogies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico

By Noé Álvarez Catapult: 208 pages, $26 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

As a child, Noé Álvarez “wandered the orchards under the spell of corridistas — musicians whose spitfire fingers flew over their three-row accordion keys,” he writes in his memoir, “Accordion Eulogies.” “Música norteña — a genre that originated in northern Mexico — gave voice to the disempowered men and women of Yakima who lived and labored apart from their motherland.” The corridos, whose name is derived from the Spanish for “to run,” tell stories of those far from home, on the run, migrating for work or bandits evading capture. Passed down through generations, their stories are a way of preserving history but also a reminder of the place whence you’ve come.

Álvarez, the son of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Yakima Valley, Wash., a semi-arid, now irrigated, area some 200 miles east of Mt. Rainier. His parents worked in the vast apple orchards and listened to the corridos on their radios, comforted by them as they toiled tending to the trees. While the songs eased some of his parents’ saudade , for Álvarez, they were also a reminder of his mythological grandfather who had deserted his family: “a homewrecker, a drunk, a gambler; a man forever caught in the currents of migration.” He was also an accordion player.

Álvarez sets out to find him. What follows is an extraordinary intertwining of fibers in which the hemp of history, music, memories and community knowledge ropes him to the man who left him behind as a child. Álvarez hopes for resolution to the inherited trauma of those forced to wander the land in search of work and the devastation left behind for those who stayed.

Searching for his abuelo also means searching for his instrument. The accordion had its origins in Germany, but was carried into North and South America by immigrants. In Louisiana, Álvarez hears its sounds in a land of the displaced “German, Irish, French, French Canadian, Native American, Anglo American, Italian, and Spanish” who landed there. Black Creole elders created forms of music that spoke to their descendants. Zydeco — music with a snappy beat that derives its name from French Creole colloquial expressions for poverty and tough times — is powered by the accordion. Álvarez meets zydeco legend Jeffery Broussard, “a bruised man with a story to tell.” A hard life as a Louisiana Black man has prepared Broussard to use his accordion to help folks with healing zydeco traditions.

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Broussard tells him, “It’s music that holds a lot of sadness … that also finds comedy in tragedy, tackling themes that are relatable to the local populations.” The Black Creoles carried the scars of slavery, and they infused their music with African and Haitian song, using call and response songs that “made music with their beaten bodies, never relinquishing the sounds of their homelands.” The accordion added its rich sound to this mix.

Similar stories emerge in other parts of the United States, where accordions took hold on the West Coast and in the Midwest, the South and Texas, where Álvarez journeys next. There he meets an accordion builder, who spends more than 100 hours handcrafting each instrument.

Álvarez reaches out to an Italian accordion player, who initially rejected the instrument for its status as working-class folk music. On a trip to Ireland, Álvarez meets a musician who lives in a country emptied out in waves as poverty, famine, political oppression and violence scattered its people. But it’s not all sadness. The Irishman tells him that “words can sometimes fail us, melody can save us. It can give you back your color, give you back your feelings, and give back the stories that migrants lose on dangerous pilgrimages.”

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As a sound carried by those who do the backbreaking labor of building and harvesting crops, work seen as undesirable by the middle class, accordion music is rich with history but also permeated by a fraught masculinity. What does it mean to be a “provider” if work carries you miles away from your family? Álvarez’s grandfather fled, a man chasing a dream of “something more” that he could not find even thousands of miles from his Mexican village.

Álvarez recalls a childhood where educators prohibited him from speaking Spanish in school, thus he was forced to learn a language of the people who relied on migrant labor but were resentful of those they employed. As an Indigenous Mexican, he recalls the irony of being prevented from speaking the language that was imported by those who had conquered the land and decimated its people.

In Mexico, Álvarez experiences the double bind of the American Mexican. Seen as American — and not to be trusted — by those who stayed, he becomes a man whose sense of identity is put to a severe test. He is personally affected by drug cartel violence, and the dangerous landscape leads him to a greater understanding of what made his family leave.

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“Accordion Eulogies” is a working-class desert odyssey that ends in the home of Álvarez’s abuelo . For years, the only reminder Álvarez had of him was a photo of a younger man holding an accordion. Tied together by their shared history of music, and their magical beliefs that what they’re looking for is lying in their next destination, the two men finally meet.

Most of us living in the U.S. are the descendants of those who fled their homelands because of the constant violence of poverty, hunger and lack of opportunity. For those who are several generations away from those experiences, the pain of leaving is long forgotten. But for the children of recent immigrants, the double consciousness of feeling set apart in America while being an alien in our ancestral lands is an ache hard to articulate.

But with “Accordion Eulogies” Álvarez has written his own corrido, creating a harmony from these difficult, sometimes unspeakable, themes. In finding connection through the accordion — originally brought from far away but now the instrumental repository of a million immigrant stories — he has composed a classic melody.

Lorraine Berry is a writer and critic in Eugene, Ore.

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The Quarry Girls: A Thriller Audio CD – Unabridged, November 1, 2022

Killers hiding in plain sight. Small-town secrets. A girl who knows too much. From the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Unspeakable Things and Bloodline comes a nerve-twisting novel inspired by a shocking true crime.

Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.

Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears―the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.

Heather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can’t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger.

She also knows she’s next.

• Language English
• Publisher Brilliance Audio
• Publication date November 1, 2022
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.5 x 6.75 inches
• ISBN-10 1713656124
• ISBN-13 978-1713656128
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

“[ The Quarry Girls is] one of the most anticipated thrillers of the fall season…[The] novel is about innocence lost, the unwritten rules of silence in small towns, what ‘broken men’ do to others, and what boys growing into men do in packs that they would never do alone. And then there’s the courage of one woman who will not allow herself to be killed.” ― St. Paul Pioneer Press

“Like Unspeakable Things and Bloodline , Jess Lourey’s The Quarry Girls is ultimately a morality tale―almost a dark fairy tale except that the plots are rooted in reality and the danger is all too real. The sad fact is that there is no shortage of past crimes to prompt Jess Lourey’s creative mind, but readers can rest easy knowing that this author will approach every idea with deep reverence for the victims and a goal of providing a healing and heartfelt journey―for both the characters and their readers―within the pages of some truly exceptional crime fiction.” ― BOLO Books

“Jess Lourey’s new novel The Quarry Girls is a love letter to Gen-Xers and Murderinos everywhere.” ― The Big Thrill

“ The Quarry Girls is true crime told as fiction and most certainly will cause readers to have some sleepless nights.” ― Bookreporter

“Few authors can blend the genuine fear generated by a sordid tale of true crime with evocative, three-dimensional characters and mesmerizing prose like Jess Lourey. Her fictional stories feel rooted in a world we all know but also fear. The Quarry Girls is a story of secrets gone to seed, and Lourey gives readers her best novel yet―which is quite the accomplishment. Calling it: The Quarry Girls will be one of the best books of the year.” ―Alex Segura, acclaimed author of Secret Identity , Star Wars Poe Dameron: Free Fall , and Miami Midnight

“Jess Lourey once more taps deep into her Midwest roots and childhood fears with The Quarry Girls , an absorbing, true crime–informed thriller narrated in the compelling voice of young drummer Heather Cash as she and her bandmates navigate the treacherous and confusing ground between girlhood and womanhood one simmering and deadly summer. Lourey conveys the edgy, hungry restlessness of teen girls with a touch of Megan Abbott, while steadily intensifying the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small 1977 Minnesota town where darkness snakes below the surface.” ―Loreth Anne White, Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Patient’s Secret

“Jess Lourey is a master of the coming-of-age thriller, and The Quarry Girls may be her best yet―as dark, twisty, and full of secrets as the tunnels that lurk beneath Pantown’s deceptively idyllic streets.” ―Chris Holm, Anthony Award–winning author of The Killing Kind

“Lourey nails the sights, music, and culture of the 1970s through the lens of teenagers in The Quarry Girls . Lourey’s skillful plotting illustrates how powerless the girls feel when confronted with the actions of older teens and the town’s powerful men.” ―Oline Cogdill, Sun Sentinel

About the Author

Jess Lourey is the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Litani , Bloodline , Unspeakable Things , The Catalain Book of Secrets , the Salem’s Cipher thrillers, and the Mira James mysteries, among many other works, including young adult, short stories, and nonfiction. An Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Lefty Award nominee, Jess is a tenured professor of creative writing and sociology and a leader of writing retreats. She is also a recipient of The Loft’s Excellence in Teaching fellowship, a Psychology Today blogger, and a TEDx presenter. Check out her TEDx Talk for the inspiration behind her first published novel. When she’s not leading writing workshops, reading, or spending time with her friends and family, you can find her working on her next story. For more information visit www.jessicalourey.com.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (November 1, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1713656124
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1713656128
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.08 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.5 x 6.75 inches
• #2,924 in Books on CD
• #3,494 in Domestic Thrillers (Books)
• #4,673 in Kidnapping Thrillers

About the author

Jess lourey.

Jess Lourey writes about secrets.

She's the Amazon Charts bestselling, Edgar-nominated, ITW Thriller, Anthony, and Minnesota Book Award-winning author of young adult, magical realism, crime fiction, nonfiction, and children's books. She's a retired professor of writing and sociology, a recipient of The Loft's Excellence in Teaching fellowship, and a TEDx presenter (check out her TEDx Talk to discover the surprising inspiration behind MAY DAY, her first published novel).

She lives in Minneapolis with a rotating batch of foster kittens (and occasional foster puppies, but man are those goobers a lot of work). Drop by jessicalourey.com to find out more.

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