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From The New York Times
Forum: Book News and Reviews
THE NARCISSIST'S DAUGHTER. By Craig Holden. (Simon & Schuster, $23.) Holden's new novel is a tight, muscular thriller about Syd Redding, a cagey, ambitious 20-something looking to leave his workingclass roots behind him. Medical school is in his future — or at least it was until he started sleeping with the wife of his boss at a hospital, a pathologist and pillar of Cleveland society. When Syd figures out the couple are using him for their own perverse pleasure, he tries to get even by seducing their teenage daughter in his stepfather's muscle car. ''I . . . glanced over now and then into the stream of her nervous yakking while holding out before myself (envisioning it there on the road ahead) that moment when it dawned'' on them ''who their daughter was hanging out with, and the delicious possibilities beyond that.'' Everyone here is playing the angles to a sinister degree, and once in a while Syd says things in a cool noir voice-over like: ''It was for some reason just then that I understood it had gone bad, all of it, and was going to come crumbling down. I just didn't know yet how bad, and how much would come.'' With several deft feints and one grand final twist, Syd manages to secure his own place in affluent Great Lakes suburbia after all.
From The Kansas City Star
February 6, 2005
Absorb yourself in Narcissist
Author: KATIE VOLIN
Craig Holden's The Narcissist's Daughter is a dirty little book. Dirty and absorbing. I'm not certain there's another way to describe it.
What else can one say about a book that centers on an underprivileged premedical student who has sex with his over-privileged boss's daughter as revenge on his boss's wife because she and the boss betray the student?
The would-be medical student is Syd Redding. Paying his way through his studies means he's slightly older than the traditional college student - but not necessarily more mature. Syd lucks out by landing a lab job at the local hospital and is quickly noticed by his boss, physician Ted Kessler, and promoted to work nights. Ted's approval is critical for Syd, because approval means a recommendation letter to a good medical school and
possibly a scholarship.
Unfortunately, Ted's wife, Joyce, works nights also - and she's no ugly duckling or stranger to seduction. She and Syd hit it off ! quickly, but their short affair has nowhere positive to go. Even though he knows he may be risking his chance of getting into a good medical program, Syd flings himself into the relationship with Joyce.
The affair ends poorly, and an infuriated Syd begins using the Kesslers' daughter, Jessi,
to get back at the couple. Meanwhile, Syd's home life isn't exactly "Leave It to Beaver." Since the death of Syd's mother, his father has been only occasionally sober enough to maintain diplomatic relations with Syd's sister, Chloe, a girl in - well, she's in the full blossom of adolescence.
The Narcissist's Daughter could have been a simple story of sex, betrayal and anger, but the plot is more complex than it appears.
Although Syd's home life isn't picture-perfect, it doesn't read like one more tale of hardship and woe, but rather as an actual family trying to hold together despite death and poverty.
The characters are flawed and also polished, like most people. Syd functions more as an antihero than a hero, but he's still a protagonist the reader wants to succeed despite his stupidity for initially mixing with the Kesslers and his cruelty to the innocent Jessi. He's nasty - but forgivable.
Holden weaves his story expertly, cutting between the introduction of Syd and the exposition of his story with the beginning of his revenge-motivated relationship with Jessi. The reader doesn't know why Syd is so upset with the Kesslers until midway through the book.
Pacing and plot development are crucial in thrillers, and Holden does an excellent job of staying one step ahead of the reader. By disguising his book as a star-crossed love affair for the first half, Holden catches the reader off guard by the time the mystery begins.
By the mystery's end, however, the reader is fully engaged and intrigued. The Narcissist's Daughter as a book is quite similar to its protagonist. Like Syd, it's a bit unrefined, even more deviant, but overall, very likable.
Copyright 2005 The Kansas City Star Co.
From Booklist
Pathology, in every sense of the word, is at the core of Holden's fifth novel. Not only is it the chosen profession of narrator Syd Redding, a 23-year-old premed student, and his antagonist, Dr. Ted Kessler, but pathology also characterizes key behavior here. After well-heeled Kessler virtually pushes Syd, who's from a blue-collar background, into the arms of his wife, Joyce, the young man discovers that he has been sucked into a sick game. Seeking revenge, Syd turns his attention to the Kesslers' 17-year-old daughter, Jessi, arousing her father's fury. Concerned primarily about his job as a tech in Kessler's lab, Syd soon finds himself and those around him in a world of trouble that comes to a shocking conclusion. Holden, who sets this in his hometown of Toledo and gives Syd his own youthful vocational interest, adds a touch of masochism to the sex and violence (none of it gratuitous) for a page-turning combination, exceptional for its well-crafted characters and solid, skillful plotting. This is a thriller with staying power, not easily forgotten.
Michele Leber
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