Review by New York Times Review
"At some point, science becomes magic," a character remarks in this inscrutable sci-fi puzzler, set in Toronto. Hosking's tense opening pages up the ante in the crowded post-"Gone Girl" shelf of disappearing acts by piling on the mysterious departures of a volatile lab researcher named Grace, along with her lover and work colleague, John. Searching for them with John's coded lab notebook and a large, mirror-lined wooden box as his primary leads is Grace's trouble-prone younger brother, and a rat named Buddy. Coherence frequently goes missing as well in this unnamed character's zigzagging account, which back-and-forths over three years as it chronicles the decline of his fractious relationship with his girlfriend in tandem with the mental and physical disintegrations of Grace and John. Hosking drops hints along the way that his narrator, a Scotch guzzler and threetime university flunk-out, isn't playing with a full deck of cards. As he monomaniacally pursues a cryptic trail, his own descent into madness feels preordained, and we're left to muddle through a hallucinatory denouement that smacks more of old-school acid trip than science or magic.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The author, a neuroscientist specializing in research into how we make decisions, turns in a startlingly fine performance with his first novel, about a man so determined to find his missing sister that he risks his own life his own reality, in fact to solve the mystery of her disappearance. Each chapter is broken into three smaller segments, the first set in 2008, the second in 2007, and the third in 2006. We're left to figure out the reason for this structure for ourselves, which amounts to having to sort out exactly what's going on in the story. But Hosking drops some hints. Clearly, there's something weird happening: a tree that's suddenly gone, a stolen car that never existed, a former girlfriend who suddenly can't recall her relationship with the narrator. Eventually we begin to realize that the characters' dialogue about subjective reality and other mind-bending ideas isn't just there because the author likes writing about such matters; it's there because it's a fundamental element of the story he's telling. There are probably 100 ways this novel could have failed (plausibility alone poses a real challenge), but, instead, it succeeds brilliantly, drawing us completely into a labyrinthine narrative.--Pitt, David Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hosking's smart and spooky debut novel follows an unnamed narrator from the time he moves to Toronto from Vancouver through the period two years later when his damaged sister, Grace, and her doting boyfriend, John, have both vanished, possibly into a parallel universe. The narrator-called "Scruffy" by his friend Lee and "Danger" by his new Tornoto girlfriend-works at an undemanding job that gives him plenty of time to explore the clues left behind by John and Grace, the latter of whom is a psychologist studying the subjective nature of time. There's a lab rat named Buddy, a notebook written in code, and most notably, a handmade wooden box, lined on the inside with mirrors, which takes up most of the couple's second bedroom and has some disturbing effects on those who enter it. Hosking grounds the fantasy and philosophical speculation firmly in a detailed version of Toronto in the early 21st century, and his plot bounces nimbly among the three years of the title, answering questions earlier chapters raise while opening up new ones. The ending pays off all the preceding buildup, pulling narrative strands together with satisfying finesse while venturing into new territory. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A really gone girl.Hoskings assured debut, a heady mixture of relationship drama and sci-fi time-travel thriller, features a fascinating character at its center: Grace, a brilliant, erratic, obsessively driven science student who has suddenly and inexplicably vanished. Our narrator and guide through the resulting narrative tangle, Graces younger brother, suffers in comparison to his charismatic sister. A diffident underachiever, hes largely a passive figure in his own story, tagging along in the wake of his elder siblings worldly social circle, until his investigation of Graces disappearance uncovers her devastating secretand the shocking actions of her unassuming genius boyfriend, John, who has rashly meddled with the secret mechanics of the universe itself for his own dark purpose. Structured anachronistically, Hoskings time-looping tale deftly teases the reader with well-deployed reveals and intrigues with elegantly limned science-fiction ideas (including the brain-hurting concept of subjective time and spooky otherworldly hunters set upon those who temporally trespass). Hoskings prose is limpid and tonally sophisticated; hes a graceful wordsmith as well as a cerebral idea man. One may wish for more of Graces defiant, complicated voicea version of the story from her point of view might have yielded more surprises and richer rewardsbut Hosking's novel satisfies as both speculative fiction and character study. A potent, sophisticated combination of science-fiction novel and psychological thriller. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
