Review: Tightly woven suspense
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 7, 2014
Charlie just finishes strapping her infant daughter, Haley, into her car seat when she is confronted by a disturbed young woman with a gun. The woman, Simone, is not some wingnut trying to prove a point by carrying weapons into a department store. Rather, she is intent on carjacking the vehicle and kidnapping Charlie and Haley in the process. Simone is very disturbed and sees this as an opportunity to prove to her world that she is capable of being a mother after suffocating her first baby under the haze of delusional thinking. Much of the action in this short novella takes place in the car with Charlie driving and Simone sitting in the backseat with Haley and pointing the gun at Charlie’s head.The suspense of The Fading Place is ramped up within the first few sentences and is maintained through the course of the story. There is no letdown. Mary SanGiovanni knows exactly how to maintain the tension mostly through a constant threat of deadly violence directed towards both mother and child. The sense of impending violence is visceral, and the image of the baby napping in her car seat with the pistol inches from her head is both unnerving and gut-wrenching. Simone is characterized as highly unpredictable and her instantaneous shifting between delusional anger and pathetic longing is convincing. Overall, the intensity of the story never wavered. I am not sure if being a parent weighs into this reaction, but I truly dreaded the outcome. Mary SanGiovanni proves that a writer can present a terror-filled ride that does not need anything supernatural to scare a reader – only a panicked mother who will do anything to protect her child.