Chargement
Informations sur le livre
The Uninvited
De Liz Jensen
Actions du livre
Commencer à lireDescription
A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother's neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry.
Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger's Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider's fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh's Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh's Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father.
Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.
Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger's Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider's fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh's Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh's Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father.
Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.
Actions du livre
Commencer à lireInformations sur le livre
The Uninvited
De Liz Jensen
Description
A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother's neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry.
Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger's Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider's fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh's Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh's Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father.
Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.
Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger's Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider's fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh's Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh's Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father.
Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.
À propos de l'auteur
Avis
This book was immense. I really had no idea how it was going to go at all, it was a bargain 99p book from The Works, didn't think id even like it but my friend had read it and said it was good and i needed something new so i just grabbed it as a spur of the moment thing. It was fantastic! Nothing like i thought it would be, i thought it was going to be a horror but it was definatly a psychological thriller. Creepy, scary and a stark realization when you get to the end that maybe we do need intervention before we ruin the planet, this takes that to a whole new level though. I loved the characters, they felt so real, Hesketh is written so brilliantly he could be someone i know easily. His aspergers and his habits fit really well with the story and add so much to it without taking away from the plot. Freddy and his decline is literally heart breaking and i felt for Hesketh so much it was actually really emotional to read by the end. It definatly was a lump in the throat moment. I'm still kind of sad about the ending, i really wanted it to be happy and rosy because i adored Hesketh so much, unfortunately it wasn't to be. I cant recommend this book enough. Im so glad i picked it up. Fabulous author, fantastic book, must read!
At first glance everything about this book screams creepy. The cover of an evil looking child, the little summary on the inside cover that instantly hooks you. However, this book quickly goes from a horror novel to something else and the children turned murderers are quickly on the back burner. This isn't a horror book and it was disappointing since I expected a gruesome book about kids that suddenly become murderers instead I got a book about a the relationship between a man and his stepson.For what it is the book is okay, just not what I was expecting and left me disappointed.
When I first saw this book I was very intrigued by it. The cover and the back summary of the book. Yes, please. I had to read this book to find out what was causing all of these children to go psycho and kill people. I agree with others that this book is not a horror story. Even though the front cover would lead you to think it is. The opening scene of this book had me hooked. I could not wait to dig deeper into the story to learn the truth. After this the story just went flatline. It was a struggle for me to read the next few chapters. Even to call this book a psychological thriller would be a stretch. It was pretty evident soon that I had lost interest in the story and learning the truth. I guess I will never learn the truth.
Good read, right from the first line! A man with Asperger's syndrome is investigating the sabotage of a company, when many others occur too! And children are attacking their adults! And it's spreading! Well, that's the gist of this story, and it moves along at a quick, crisp pace. I liked it a lot, and was even a bit sad when it was over. Was the whole thing a virus, aliens, body snatchers, or some zombie/vampire thing? You gotta read it!
It is lucky for the author of this book that I even decided to finish it. The book opens with a series of extremely violent acts perpetrated upon adults by children. The it moves to the life of Heskethe Lock, a competent cultural anthropologist who is sent to various sites worldwide by his boss Ashok to gather details of corporate sabotage. Heskethe has just left his former girlfriend for a surprising reason, but is still very much attached to her son Freddy whom Heskethe treats as his own son. This is the first third of the book. If this sounds like a boring read to this point, it is. What makes this book interesting is what develops later. If you have the fortitude to bear with this book's rough start, you'll find an inventive story which ties all of the disparate pieces together and an interesting look into the workings of the mind of Heskethe, an individual with Asperger's syndrome. I like how the author uses some of the definitive traits of a person with Asperger's syndrome to make a highly likable main character. The science fiction part of this book, once revealed, was what made my interest in finishing this story heat up.
(This review can also be found on my blog The (Mis)Adventures of a Twenty-Something Year Old Girl).
When I saw that Liz Jensen had written a new book, I knew I wanted to read it. I loved her book The Rapture and was hoping The Uninvited would be just as good. However, I was disappointed with this book.
Hesketh is a man who has Asperger's Syndrome. He is sent by his company to investigate cases of whistle blowers and sabotage within companies. When Hesketh goes to investigate his first case in Taiwan, he gets more than he bargained for. The supposed whistle blower seems to be talking non-sense. The next day, the whistle blower commits suicide. Soon, this is happening all over the world. Not only that, but it children all over the world are attacking adults. What's going on? Will Hesketh be able to find the answer before it's too late?
The title of The Uninvited suits the book. Like most of my reviews, I don't want to go into too much detail as to why the title fits because I don't want to give away any spoilers.
I found this particular cover to be a bit plain for my liking. The cover didn't catch my attention. (It was the synopsis that did). This cover doesn't really give too much away about what the story is going to be about. To me, the cover just looks like some spoilt child hiding in her room trying to spy on what's going on which has nothing to do with the actual story of the book!!
The world building is very believable. I could actually imagine everything written in the book happening as the author was writing about it. I had no qualms about the world building. The author brings this dystopian world to life beautifully and scarily so!
Unfortunately, the pacing was horrible in this book. I had to force myself to read it and finish it which is a shame because I really wanted to love The Uninvited. The story just went on too slowly for my liking. A lot of the time, I was contemplating giving up on this book, but I've read a lot of books that get better towards the end. However, this wasn't the case with this book. It never got any better. It was a slow read throughout.
The dialogue, to me, confused me. It featured a lot of science jargon that I didn't understand. I found myself completely lost through most of this book. The ending, especially, left me the most confused. I didn't understand why or how. I just felt it was never fully explained which left me feeling rather annoyed.
The characters just felt too one dimensional. I couldn't relate to any of them, and I didn't care what happened to them. The character of Hesketh just came across really annoying. Yes, I understand he has Asperger's but so does my son, and he's no where as annoying as Hesketh. (And I'm not just saying that because he's my son). Throughout the book, Hesketh repeats things to himself three times, and he's constantly talking about his origami. I realise that he has his little quirks, but I felt as if Hesketh's origami was being shoved down my throat. If I had to pick a favourite character, it was be Professor Whybray. He just had that lovely old man quality and came across feeling grandfatherly.
All in all, I think the idea of this story is a great one, but it was just poorly executed. The pacing was too slow, the characters were too dull, and the dialogue was just too confusing. Like I said, I really wanted to enjoy this book as Liz Jenson has written some wonderful books before this one.
I really wouldn't recommend this book, but if you'd like to give it a try, I'd say ages 16 would be the best ages to try to enjoy it.
I'd give The Uninvited by Liz Jensen a 1.5 out of 5.
(A special thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review).
When I saw that Liz Jensen had written a new book, I knew I wanted to read it. I loved her book The Rapture and was hoping The Uninvited would be just as good. However, I was disappointed with this book.
Hesketh is a man who has Asperger's Syndrome. He is sent by his company to investigate cases of whistle blowers and sabotage within companies. When Hesketh goes to investigate his first case in Taiwan, he gets more than he bargained for. The supposed whistle blower seems to be talking non-sense. The next day, the whistle blower commits suicide. Soon, this is happening all over the world. Not only that, but it children all over the world are attacking adults. What's going on? Will Hesketh be able to find the answer before it's too late?
The title of The Uninvited suits the book. Like most of my reviews, I don't want to go into too much detail as to why the title fits because I don't want to give away any spoilers.
I found this particular cover to be a bit plain for my liking. The cover didn't catch my attention. (It was the synopsis that did). This cover doesn't really give too much away about what the story is going to be about. To me, the cover just looks like some spoilt child hiding in her room trying to spy on what's going on which has nothing to do with the actual story of the book!!
The world building is very believable. I could actually imagine everything written in the book happening as the author was writing about it. I had no qualms about the world building. The author brings this dystopian world to life beautifully and scarily so!
Unfortunately, the pacing was horrible in this book. I had to force myself to read it and finish it which is a shame because I really wanted to love The Uninvited. The story just went on too slowly for my liking. A lot of the time, I was contemplating giving up on this book, but I've read a lot of books that get better towards the end. However, this wasn't the case with this book. It never got any better. It was a slow read throughout.
The dialogue, to me, confused me. It featured a lot of science jargon that I didn't understand. I found myself completely lost through most of this book. The ending, especially, left me the most confused. I didn't understand why or how. I just felt it was never fully explained which left me feeling rather annoyed.
The characters just felt too one dimensional. I couldn't relate to any of them, and I didn't care what happened to them. The character of Hesketh just came across really annoying. Yes, I understand he has Asperger's but so does my son, and he's no where as annoying as Hesketh. (And I'm not just saying that because he's my son). Throughout the book, Hesketh repeats things to himself three times, and he's constantly talking about his origami. I realise that he has his little quirks, but I felt as if Hesketh's origami was being shoved down my throat. If I had to pick a favourite character, it was be Professor Whybray. He just had that lovely old man quality and came across feeling grandfatherly.
All in all, I think the idea of this story is a great one, but it was just poorly executed. The pacing was too slow, the characters were too dull, and the dialogue was just too confusing. Like I said, I really wanted to enjoy this book as Liz Jenson has written some wonderful books before this one.
I really wouldn't recommend this book, but if you'd like to give it a try, I'd say ages 16 would be the best ages to try to enjoy it.
I'd give The Uninvited by Liz Jensen a 1.5 out of 5.
(A special thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review).
towards me, the book was very boring and had to skip to the end to get a bit of exitment ( literally )
So the question is, Heaven or Hell?’I say, ‘Pyjama Girl dreamed about a beautiful white desert that sparkled. She said it looked like Heaven.’‘If it is, it’s a salty one. What have you come up with on that front?’I glance at my notes. ‘The fact that salt’s been very dynamic of late. Salt levels in most oceans have increased dramatically over the last fifty years. But even more so in the last three or four. There are many countries that are reporting massive crystal deposits inland because much of the water table is salt-laden. Farmers have been battling it for years. It comes to the surface by capillary transport and when it evaporates, you have whole deserts of it. In South Australia there are already millions of hectares where nothing will grow. They call it the White Death.’Hesketh Lock, the protagonist of this story, is autistic, and obsessed with origami and paint colour charts. He is not lucky in love, having been recently dumped by his girlfriend Kaitlin who is refusing to let him see his much loved stepson Freddy. Hesketh's descriptions of his relationship with Freddy really made me warm to him, while his encounters with women made me laugh. On the other hand, he has done well in his professional life, finding a boss, who appreciates his talents and is prepared to help him with his social skills when he has problems in relating to people. Hesketh is an investigator for Phipps & Wexman, a company that tracks down whistleblowers so that they can be 'rewarded' by their employers. He is very good at his job due to a talent for seeing patterns in behaviour, because he isn't distracted by the emotions of the people he investigates.The story begins with Hesketh investigating a sudden outbreak of sabotage (his company's term for whistle blowing), in which loyal employees who love the companies they work for, deliberately sabotage them, seemingly against their will, and commit suicide soon after. At the same time there is an outbreak of violent attacks perpetrated by children under 10 on family members and Hesketh begins to see an overlap in the two, just as Phipps & Wexman are employed by the government to investigate the causes of the rapidly worsening situation alongside Hesketh's former mentor, Professor Whybray, who has come out of retirement because of the due to the crisis.The saboteurs claim to have been made to do it by child-sized spirits (trolls, djinns, etc depending on their culture) that have somehow got inside them. The children do not seem to be prone to suicide, but refuse to say why they attacked people they loved and don't seem to remember what they have done. While reading the book, I was wondering whether there would be a fantasy explanation with the trolls and djinns being real, or a psychological explanation with the collective unconscious breaking through, so the actual explanation for what happened came as a surprise. I quite liked the ending, with its note of optimism coming after so much devastation. Because Hesketh doesn't do wishful thinking, I believed him when he said there was hope for the future.
A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother’s neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry.
Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger’s Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioural patterns and an outsider’s fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh’s Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh’s Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father. Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.
Another entry under ‘dystopian’, my current favourite genre, this seriously creepy novel had me talking and thinking about it for days after I had finished it. Anthropologist Hesketh’s narrative voice is perfect for this. He is good at spotting patterns, calm and detached from all the hysteria and when it does get too much he indulges in a bit of mental origami. Perfect
The use of cultural mythologies (the ancestor spirits in Japan, trolls in Sweden, djinn in the Middle East) in the story was very well done and really intrigued me in the build-up when nobody really knows what is going on.
The ending has come in for some criticism but I thought it was perfect, I knew enough already to kow it would be bad!
Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger’s Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioural patterns and an outsider’s fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh’s Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh’s Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father. Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.
Another entry under ‘dystopian’, my current favourite genre, this seriously creepy novel had me talking and thinking about it for days after I had finished it. Anthropologist Hesketh’s narrative voice is perfect for this. He is good at spotting patterns, calm and detached from all the hysteria and when it does get too much he indulges in a bit of mental origami. Perfect
The use of cultural mythologies (the ancestor spirits in Japan, trolls in Sweden, djinn in the Middle East) in the story was very well done and really intrigued me in the build-up when nobody really knows what is going on.
The ending has come in for some criticism but I thought it was perfect, I knew enough already to kow it would be bad!
I am a Liz Jensen fan, although I don’t make as much of an effort to read her books as I should do. True, whenever I see one in a charity shop, I buy it. But, seriously, I should be buying her books new from a retailer – online or otherwise – because they are that good. Consider it a personal failing. In The Uninvited, the narrator, who suffers from Asperger’s, finds himself drawn into an investigation into children who have murdered their parents. And there seems to be an epidemic of such murders. In all cases, the children have no idea why they committed murder, and seem completely unaffected by their actions. Jensen never gives you quite what you expect – and that’s as true of this novel as it is of any of her others. The narrator’s condition is handled expertly, the circumstances of the deaths he investigates are presented convincingly, and the actual plot of the novel actually seems almost plausible. I’m not the only one with a failing here – we should all be reading Liz Jensen. And The Uninvited is as good a place to start as any.
bookshelves: winter-20132014, under-1000-ratings, tbr-busting-2014, published-2012, britain-scotland, taiwan, recreational-homicide, casual-violence, mental-health, lifestyles-deathstyles, fraudio, britain-england, psychology, boo-scary, anthropology, mystery-thriller, sci-fi, dystopian, filthy-lucre, forest, mythology, religion, arran, sweden, trolls, fantasy, dubai, environmental-issues, suicide, little-green-men, cannibalismRead from July 01, 2012 to January 20, 2014Description: A seven-year-old girl puts a nail-gun to her grandmother's neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious?As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry. He has never been good at relationships. Asperger's Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioural patterns, and an outsider's fascination with group dynamics.Nothing obvious connects Hesketh's Southeast Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behaviour of his beloved step-son, Freddy. But when his Taiwan contact dies shockingly, and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, Hesketh is forced to make connections that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career and - most devastatingly of all - his role as a father.Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.Origami CraneOrigami Praying MantisOrigami Hermit CrabIn the Dubai gymnast leap sequence Tokoloshe was mentioned three times.From wiki: In Zulu mythology, Tokoloshe is a dwarf-like water sprite. It is considered a mischievous and evil spirit that can become invisible by drinking water. Tokoloshes are called upon by malevolent people to cause trouble for others. At its least harmful a tokoloshe can be used to scare children, but its power extends to causing illness and even death upon the victim. The way to get rid of him is to call in the n’anga (witch doctor), who has the power to banish him from the area.The children start forming a collective consciousness, show signs of arrested development and an addiction for salt.Hesketh narrates the first person action from an anthropological and autistic viewpoint and it works very well. In Wyndham's 'Midwich Cuckoos' the story is satisfactorily resolved (view spoiler), all tied up with bows; here was a somewhat wobbly ending as the author mounted her own environmental soapbox, her viewpoint working through the Professors notebooks and Hesketh's epiphany. Lost a star right there. It has been a while since I read The Rapture but I have a feeling the same thing happened there too. Time for a re-visit of that before I spend future money on habitual preachy endings.That said, 95% of this was very exciting and fresh.4* The Rapture4* The UninvitedTrivia: Liz Jensen is married to author Carsten Jensen:5* We, The Drowned3* I Have Seen the World BeginCrossposted:WordpressBooklikesLeafMarkLibrarythingaNobii
Hesketh, the main character in Liz Jensen’s newest novel, The Uninvited, is someone I don’t think I shall ever forget. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to get to know him through this book, and I can’t shake the feeling that he’s not just a literary character, but someone very real. Hesketh has Asperger’s. He has a Ph.D. in anthropology, an affinity for learning and speaking foreign languages, a life-long love for linguistics, and a passion for origami. Everyday life frequently over-stimulates him and he resolves these situations by folding origami figures compulsively in his mind. For pleasure, he reads about the latest advances in particle physics. Hesketh is the ultimate reliable narrator; it is impossible for him to tell a lie. His ex-wife calls him a meat robot, but readers will learn that he has a deep reservoir of humanity that makes him a better human being than most of the best without Asperger’s. He has some odd social behavior that is not uncommon to those on the autism spectrum…behavior that at times can be extremely humorous. Hesketh is a gem of a human just waiting for the reader to discover. If a fine author with very strong writing skills manages to deliver an extraordinary character study, then that would generally be enough to satisfy most literary readers. But what makes this book extraordinary is that this brilliant character study is enveloped in first-rate dystopian sci-fi thriller. I love dystopian fiction, but rarely get a chance to read it because it is hard for me to find authors that will hold my interest. This book grabbed me at the beginning, and didn’t let go until I’d quickly made my way to the end. For me, it was a high-octane literary and thinking-person’s thriller. The main character is employed as a Behavioral Patterns Expert for an international corporation with a sudden growing worldwide client-base seeking help resolving devastating and singularly unexplainable cases of insider sabotage. Hesketh is the analyst sent to figure out what is going on...to examine the chaos of seemingly unrelated facts surrounding each case and somehow find the underlying patterns that connect the dots, in short, to find out why. Simultaneously, the worldwide media attention is focused on a slow but growing phenomenon of preadolescent children violently attacking and killing their parents and other adult family members. Hesketh eventually sees a link between the two types of incidents: corporate sabotage and child murderers. It is a problem so big it threatens the collapse of the whole of global civilization. It is a force that can’t be stopped. Hesketh’s job eventually morphs into a singular focus: nurturing and saving his ex-stepchild, Freddy K. Through Hesketh’s love and care for Freddy K., we begin to understand the depths of humanity that often remain hidden behind the outward social awkwardness of Asperger’s. The Uninvited is a gem of a novel. Reading it makes me want to turn around and read all the author’s previous works…and I will.
The Uninvited is a dystopian novel set in the present day, where children start behaving oddly and attacking adults close to them. From a few isolated incidents, modern society soon reaches breaking point and a new equilibrium is reached.The underlying message of The Uninvited - that our current society and population growth is unsustainable - is an interesting one, and is explored in a novel way. However, I felt the idea was not delved into as much it could have been, and I, as a fan of dystopian fiction, was left wanting more. The start is absorbing but slow, with the rest of the novel feeling rushed which leads to very little attention being paid to the issues arising from the collapse of society. Instead the book jumps forward to a unsatisfying ending. The novel itself is easy to read, with the characters, particularly Hesketh, making an emotional connection with the reader. The inner monologue from Hesketh, was particularly interesting in its portrayal of someone with Aspergers, and this aspect of his charactersation was particularly well done. The logical approach of Hesketh makes it easier to take in some of the more far-fetched aspects of the plot. I enjoyed the book on the whole, and finished it in a few hours; the intrigue surrounding the source of the 'pandemic' carrying me onwards. The eventual explanation is somewhat unexpected although not all together convincing, which the author alludes to with a line "Let string theory work that out". One niggle with the ARC version was extremely poor formatting, with many missing letters and several misspellings This made reading it on my Kindle frustrating, and hopefully the retail version is better. Overall the premise is a good one, with an intriguing take on the issue of overpopulation, however the author fails to take full advantage, and as such the novel is merely a good read - rather than something more outstanding or thought provoking.
Read and reviewed for Bloomsbury PressA really excellent read that kept me gripped throughout. The premise is a really interesting and very timely one regarding the way we treat our world. The idea of children becoming revenge-seeking automatons is a disturbing one and was really well played out in the book. The reader finds themselves gripped from the start as we read about a young girl in leafy Harrogate, ready for bed in her pretty butterfly pajamas who kills her grandmother with a nail-gun to the neck. It's a brutal beginning and certainly one that makes the reader want to read on. I particularly enjoyed the narration by Hesketh a man navigating his way through life with a brilliant academic mind and a deep misunderstanding of human relationships thanks to his Asperger's. "We are all liars bud. It's human nature'. No, I thought. He's wrong. Through a quirk of DNA, I am not part of that 'we'. I can get obsessive about things. Or sidetracked. I can appear brutal too, I'm told. But I know right from wrong. And I revere the truth. So you will at least find in me an honest narrator'.And we do. He is a brilliant choice for a narrator in that he is set slightly apart from the other characters who get swallowed by hysteria and anger at what is happening around them. In Hesketh we get a narrator who, whilst taking part in the action can also stand back and tell it like it is. His complicated relationship as an ex-almost-stepfather to Freddy filled the emotional gap and made Hesketh a totally realised character. His attempts to connect with people by making them gifts of complex origami was also very touching. Overall I enjoyed this much more than The Rapture as I felt the characters were more developed and the premise was well played out. Not much cheer in this dystopian nightmare, but a great read, recommended for those looking for a psychological thriller with teeth.
What is it about books with children acting badly which makes them so compellingly creepy? Liz Jensen's new book, The Uninvited opens with a small child calmly holding a nail gun against her grandmother's neck and pulling the trigger. Soon, this type of violent act is repeated again and again as children everywhere begin killing their loved ones. As well, there are acts of sabotage in which children seem somehow to be controlling adults. And if this isn't creepy enough the children begin to form feral packs, eat bugs, and. in horrible acts of cannibalism, each other.The main protagonist of the story, Hesketh Lock, is hired to discover what is causing all of these strange occurrences. He has Asperger's which makes him the perfect observer since he can't engage emotionally, that is, until his own stepson begins to show the same bizarre symptoms as other children and soon the case becomes very personal even as the violence escalates.It is hard to classify this book. It seems to be an amalgam of several genres - dystopian, scifi, thriller, horror, and fantasy but whatever you call it, it makes for one hell of a scary read.
In Liz Jensen's novel, The Uninvited, alarming things begin to happen around the world. There are more and more incidents involving very young children killing their parents or caretakers. In the corporate world, loyal workers suddenly begin doing things to sabotage their companies and then kill themselves. Before their deaths, they claim that their actions were controlled by the "little people" who have taken over their bodies. Panic ensues as killer-child groups go feral and adults begin to fear and despise the young. Anthropologist and public relations man, Hesketh Lock, is charged with investigating the patterns to discover what is happening. I did not find the plot compelling. What did keep my interest in the book was the character of Hesketh. A thirty-six year old man with Asberger's Syndrome, he was not, as his ex-girlfriend called him, "a robot made from meat." The story is written in first person from Hesketh's point of view, and he clearly shows his feelings throughout the story. Though his reactions to events may not be typical, and his interactions with women seem far-fetched, Hesketh shows a clear love for Freddie, the young son of his former girlfriend. When Freddie begins to show symptoms of becoming one of the killer children, Hesketh does all in his power to protect and help him.I love the idea of a protagonist with Asberger's, and can understand that his unemotional reactions might make him an excellent anthropologist. I also enjoyed reading about his time spent with Freddie, and the conversations they had. All in all, however, Hesketh's personality alone was not enough to make the story a very interesting read.
Hesketh Lock is an anthropologist with remarkable talents. He isn’t good with relationships but he’s incredibly good at spotting and analysing behavioural patterns. Therefore, when he’s called to investigate corporate cases of whistle-blowing in Taiwan and sabotage in Sweden, he’s looking for the individuals’ reasons for their actions. What he finds is something far more sinister, wide-reaching and difficult to analyse, as it seems that children across the world are embracing violence. Hesketh needs to rise above his natural inclination towards the logical, as the world around him becomes increasingly chaotic.The Uninvited is an incredibly compelling read. Originally it feels like a mystery to be solved but as things develop the novel takes on an almost apocalyptic feel, raising many questions about our approach to life, overpopulation, the damage we do as a species. Casting Hesketh in the role of the main character adds an extraordinary twist that prevents this from being ‘another dystopian novel with a sexy hero’. Hesketh is good looking, smart, intuitively analytical but he is not a typical hero. He has Asperger’s Syndrome and this means he is not intuitively emotive or able to pick up ‘people signals’ easily. That said, this is also the reason he is a remarkable character in many other ways, such as his ability to be rational. He is also a wonderful step-father, showing a real tenderness towards his step-son, even when he becomes violent. He is not ‘a robot made of meat’ – a phrase that comes up repeatedly throughout the novel, having being cruelly levelled at Hesketh by his ex.The Uninvited is wonderfully written with a great array of characters, situations and plot points. The ending was unexpected but touchingly satisfying. I read this in two sittings and enjoyed it immensely.
Supremely creepy! The children in this book are enough to give any parent pause. You know that when a book begins with a seven year old murdering her grandmother with a nail gun to the neck, you're in for an interesting read. The narrator, the autistic savant Hesketh, is empathetic to readers sensitive to his crippling logic and inability to relate to others emotionally. Beyond the horrorish/ science-fiction type plot line lies a touching tale of one man's love for his troubled stepson. The Uninvited is definitely an enthralling read recommended for fans of suspense, psychological thriller, horror and dystopian fiction.