(4/5 stars) Get ready for a book that transcends genre
The Other Emily by Dean Koontz is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. Koontz begins with a long-lost lover trope and proceeds to twist it into something purely odd through a combination of sheer determination, literary fearlessness, and something I can only describe as plain weirdness. This book’s premise is easily one of the most fascinating I have ever read, and I relished the way Koontz artfully twisted my mind into knots of confusion that grew more complex with each page.
Ten years after the love of his life, Emily Carlino, mysteriously disappears, David Thorne sees her sipping a martini at an elegant Los Angeles bar. The catch? She hasn’t aged a day. She has never met David before. And her name is not Emily.
Instead, she introduces herself as Maddison to a disbelieving, thoroughly freaked-out, and irrevocably intrigued David. Entranced by what he believes must be the reappearance of his one great love, David’s feelings for Maddison flourish as quickly as do his suspicion and curiosity. Even as he and Maddison begin seeing each other, David investigates Maddison and Emily and starts to discover increasingly disturbing facts about their link. David’s curiosity grows into an obsessive thirst for the truth as he continues pursuing a relationship with Maddison: “no mystery in this world [is] so complicated or so dark that love [can] not solve it…” or so David believes.
It only gets stranger; too many facts that don’t quite add up accumulate. We learn about mysterious flowers left on Emily’s empty, unmarked grave, a psychopathic serial killer who mummified women in the hope of preserving and reanimating them, Maddison’s odd disappearances, and her professed profession as an assassin.
It makes even less sense when you read it, trust me. And yet this mind-bending conglomeration of ever-more confusing theories and facts is what made this book so interesting to read. Koontz beautifully develops a sense of foreboding and mystery as the plot unfolds, and he slowly peels back layers of who Maddison is. The intense uneasiness that Koontz cultivates only adds to the experience of reading it.
Koontz’s writing is unusual in its inconsistency; it is at times very direct but at others weaves itself into a tangle of lengthy imagery. While it could be surprising to switch between traditional narrative-style prose to beautiful yet excessive descriptions, I didn’t find the flowery writing distracting and thought that it ultimately added something to the book. That being said, something that I kept on noticing is that Koontz really loves describing sunsets. The images he create are beautiful—he writes, “golden sunlight spangled the sea, as though Midas had gone for a swim and transformed the water into a treasure, and the palm trees cast shadows as royal purple as they were black, and flecks of some mineral sparkled like tiny diamonds in the pathway pavement, as if the park were a king’s garden in which a bespelled princess waited to be awakened.” However, it did feel as if Koontz took a few too many opportunities to describe the sunset, and I ended up tiring of his overwhelming albeit pretty imagery.
David is a balanced, encapsulating narrator. At the beginning of the book, we are introduced to the intelligent yet fading author and learn about his tangible isolation and exhaustion. Then, as soon as he encounters Maddison, we feel the upheaval of emotion, memories, and general confusion he experiences. As the book progresses, we get more intimately acquainted with his thought process and flaws, and get to watch him doubt his sanity (and doubt it ourselves as well… a lot). David’s flaws and instability save him from the curse of perfection, making him a well-developed, interesting main character—the perfect person to guide us through the rollercoaster that is The Other Emily.
And we need a guide. I like when a plot goes off the rails a little at the end—I live for surprising twists and heart-wrenching reveals. But The Other Emily abandoned the tracks completely and happily chugged in the opposite direction. And then started flying, because why not? Without revealing too much about the plot, the last few chapters got incredibly… weird. I felt as if the genre of the book had completely changed from a twisted romantic mystery to full on science fiction. It was certainly not what I had been expecting, and it was, to be frank, a little too much of a switch for me. The ending was my main complaint about the book, but if you’re really open minded and willing to completely ditch the figurative rails of the plot, you might enjoy it.
Ultimately, Koontz’s The Other Emily is an incredibly confusing wild ride, but it somehow manages to work for most of the book. It’s deeply engaging and is thought provoking when it comes to topics like morals, love, and recovery. Ridiculous ending aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the read and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys mystery, but especially those with a love for the… eccentric.
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