Invisible Boy

I enjoyed this book despite the appalling amount of slang, cursing, and such and that is saying something. I like more narrative and the use of description but still it was good enough to finish it... cursing a lot is no substitute for story...

INVISIBLE BOY Cornelia Read Grand Central Publishing ISBN: 978-0-446-51134-6 $24.99 - Hardback 432 pages Reviewer: Annie Slessman If you read The Crazy School by Cornelia Read then you already know that Cornelia Read is a master storyteller. In INVISIBLE BOY, Cornelia takes Madeline Dare on a new adventure in New York City set in the early 1990's. Madeline, while helping friend, Cate, clean up a historical cemetery discovers the skeleton of a three year old boy whose chest is caved in from a brutal beating. This discovery leads her to a new friendship with a woman police officer and the rediscovery of an old college buddy. Interwoven into this story is Madeline's strange friendship with her college friend, Astrid. Astrid, the beautiful, has just married Christoph who has offered Madeline's unemployed husband a position with his firm. Astrid's strange behavior takes on a new high after her marriage to Christoph and Madeline finds herself caught between her loyalty to her husband and her friendship with Astrid. This is not a simple story. Rather it is one that is complex and thought provoking. Read combines the interesting elements in human nature, relationships and civic responsibility and threads them into one bracing novel. There is something for everyone in this work and I can understand why it was chosen for publication. Few writers today can weave such a complex story and yet, provide reading that will span age and educational barriers. Cornelia Read lives is New Hampshire and can be visited on her website at [...].

Cornelia Read had me hooked from the first lines of her new book, wherein she absolutely nails the New York City of two decades ago. Madeline Dare makes her third appearance here. Maddie is a former socialite whose mother had gone "from deb parties to the verge of food stamps, [her] father from the floor of the Stock Exchange to a VW camper behind the Chevron station in Malibu." She is now 27 years old, and after growing up in California and then living in upstate New York and the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts, she and her husband of two years are living in Manhattan, where she works taking phone orders for books, having previously "worked as a teacher at a boarding school for disturbed kids and as a journalist for a couple of small newspapers," which readers will recognize as the settings in the first two books in the series. Maddie and her husband share an apartment with her younger sister, Pagan ["Pague"], and a friend of many years, Sue. We are soon introduced to another boarding-school friend, Astrid, whose vagaries are difficult to fathom, by Maddie as well as the reader. They soon find out that Madeline's much-married [and divorced] mother is planning a Valentine's Day wedding to her newest beau. Those story lines are suddenly superseded by a much darker one, when Madeline discovers, among leaves and weeds in a small cemetery in Queens, the skeleton of what turns out to be a boy of about three years of age, the body apparently having been dumped there about six months previously. There is evidence that the boy was and had been the victim of severe abuse during his short lifetime. Madeline is one of the early witnesses in the ultimate trial of the accused killers. The writing is by turn lyrical, funny as well as witty, and deeply moving. The chilling subtext throughout, that of child abuse and its implicit "destruction of trust," is handled with great empathy and, at the same time, necessary brutality. The vivid courtroom scenes are impossible to read without choking up, even before the closing arguments are made. And yet this reader was totally unprepared for the final pages. This is a beautifully written novel, one which will stay with me for a while, and it is highly recommended.

What a wonderfully written book. The characters are believable, unique, and interesting. The plot kept you wondering and wanting to turn the next page. I'm looking forward to her next book.

Cornelia Read is the sort of writer who makes me want more. I was eagerly looking forward to this, her third novel, and when it arrived I found myself reading Invisible Boy straight through in one night. Madeline Dare is a sympathetic and believable character and the intertwined story lines advance the plot in a way that seems effortless and natural and is the hallmark of truly gifted craftsmanship. Cornelia Read has created a fascinating story that explores the ties of family and love and damage, parents and children, friendship, marriage, and the moral imperative. Her message is as compelling as Vonnegut's, "God damn it babies, you've got to be kind". This book is a knockout.

In 1990 in Manhattan, former socialite Madeline Dare is happy with her marriage to blue-collar Dean though she does not like their dumpy Union Square apartment that she and her spouse share with her sister and their friend. Still she does not miss her former lifestyle of the rich and socially Mayflower prominence nor her exile to the Berkshires as she accepts being poor. Madeline runs into her distant cousin Cate Ludlam, who is leading a clean-up of Prospect Cemetery in Queens. Unable to say no, Madeline is drafted to pull weed duty. However, she finds the skeletal remains of a young child, who turns out to be missing three years old Teddy Underhill. Refusing to stay out of the NYPD inquiry, Madeline learns that the little boy was an abuse victim of his mother and her boyfriend. Unlike The Crazy School or A Field of Darkness amateur sleuthing stints, Invisible Boy is more a condemning look at society that is run by class status, heritage elitism and racial stereotyping; as justice is not blind to the affluent or the poor albeit treated differently. Readers will appreciate Madeline's daring exploits in Manhattan and Queens as she refuses to back down from a system that enables a three year old to be discarded. Harriet Klausner