Eden

May 7, 2018
Kleine’s fascinating second novel (after Calf) follows Hope, a struggling New York City playwright in her 30s. Her affordable sublet situation has just been derailed by the unexpected return of the owner. Having lost her girlfriend of seven years, her mom to cancer, and now her apartment, Hope is adrift. But Hope’s story goes deeper: as teenagers, she and her older sister, Eden, were abducted by a man named Larry who posed as their father’s friend in order to lure them into his truck. Hope receives a letter from the district attorney’s office notifying her that Larry is up for parole—but if she or Eden could provide any previously unshared details of their abduction, they could help keep Larry in prison. The problem is that neither Hope nor anyone else in her family has been in touch with Eden for decades, and it seems Eden intends to keep it that way. Hope embarks on a cross-country trip to find Eden, driven partly by Larry’s upcoming parole and partly by the desire to see her sister again so they can perhaps finally move on from their past. Driving her father’s old camper van and making pit stops in D.C., Virginia, and Arizona, Hope must turn to a number of people, including her ex-girlfriend, Hope and Eden’s father and his new girlfriend, and Eden’s ex-lover, for assistance along the way. Kleine’s novel is somewhat overambitious and stuffed with a few too many characters and narrative threads, but what ultimately emerges is a gripping portrait of the lingering effects of trauma.

May 1, 2018
A young woman becomes unraveled as she unravels her past.When Hope and her sister from the same father but a different mother, Eden, were young they were abducted from a bus station while waiting for their father to pick them up. The kidnapper, Larry, convinced the girls that he was a friend of their father's. They escaped, but not without physical and emotional scars. The novel takes place 20 years later. Having long dissociated herself from the family, Hope is a struggling playwright who is being evicted from her illegal sublet and who, somewhat recently, has broken up with her girlfriend of eight years after cheating on her. Hope's mother is dead and her father is living with his new, annoyingly cheery wife. When Hope receives a letter from the Office of the District Attorney informing her that Larry is up for parole, it launches her on a quest to find her sister and to find the truth behind her memory of what happened. She--and the DA--hopes that if she can find Eden and make her side of the story known, Larry will be put away forever. Over the course of the book, in flashbacks, more details of their harrowing experience become clear. Hope, traveling in her father's old camper van, follows Eden's trail to California. This is a compelling tale, and Hope, as the lost and floundering narrator, is an appealingly honest, if somewhat frustrating, character. But for so striking a story, it is surprisingly lacking where is should be stirring. Kleine (Calf, 2015) falls just short of impact, or insight. As a result, the book--which has all the potential elements for excitement and originality--falls prey to banality: "I opened to a blank page and wrote: a play where the entire room is white, filled with light, completely open, with a single painted line--a thin stripe in blue painted along the upstage wall, representing the horizon, representing possibility."An unlikely combination of both absorbing and flat.

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June 15, 2018

Kleine, who won big attention in 2015 with her small-press debut, Calf, returns with the story of sisters Hope and Eden, abducted while waiting for their divorced father to pick them up for the weekend. Twenty-plus years later, Hope is a struggling New York playwright desperate to find her out-of-touch sister: their testimony is needed to keep their abductor in jail.With a 35,000-copy first printing.

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