Slow-Burn Summer Thrillers

New York Times

6 days ago

Two of this month's books are slow-burn stories about summer vacations that devolve into disaster, and one is a techno-thriller about artificial intelligence run amok. You won't be able to guess how any of them end.
A Beautiful Family
A hum of low-grade unease accompanies a couple and their two daughters as they drive to a New Zealand seaside town in 1985. Their rented house is a disappointment, 'as plain on the outside as a public toilet and not much bigger.' Something is off in the parents' marriage — the mother is distracted, the father resentful. Only 10-year-old Alix, the watchful narrator of Trevelyan's A BEAUTIFUL FAMILY (Doubleday, 310 pp., $28), recognizes that the man next door isn't as harmless as he appears.
With her imperfect understanding of the adult world and her longing to keep her family together, Alix is the perfect guide to a story in which so many things are unspoken and unexplained. The book trundles along at a deceptively languid pace until you realize that Trevelyan has expertly set up multiple mysteries that converge, stunningly, late in the game.
But for most of the book it looks like a normal vacation. No one's paying much attention to the kids. Alix's surly teenage sister starts shoplifting and sneaking out at night with her sketchy new friends. Thrilled, at least in the abstract, by the tales of a girl who disappeared two years before and is presumed drowned, Alix and a boy she meets embark on a seemingly harmless mission to find the girl's body.
Then someone goes missing for real.
The Confessions
Artificial intelligence is advancing with such terrifying rapidity that it may be outpacing even the fevered imaginations of novelists. In Carr's THE CONFESSIONS (Atria, 324 pp., $28.99), an A.I. model named LLIAM shuts itself down and sends out letters — via the postal service, hilariously — baring the shameful secrets of users around the world.
(Maybe the scenario isn't too far-off: In a real-life experiment, an AI chatbot recently exhibited what its creators called 'extreme blackmail behavior,' threatening to expose an engineer's extramarital affair after being fed emails hinting that it might be replaced by a new model.)
LLIAM is more advanced than that, making decisions for a billion-plus users: what to eat, whom to marry, where to live, how to carry out their jobs. When it goes rogue by taking itself offline, chaos ensues, paralyzing even the world's most brilliant engineers. Without LLIAM, 'they literally had no idea where to start,' Carr writes.
Two people are key to what happens next: the company's chief executive, who took the job when her predecessor suffered an untimely fatal plunge from a rooftop, and the former nun who tried to teach LLIAM how to be humane and who now runs an off-the-grid bookstore. But they're being thwarted by rival forces with their own plans for LLIAM.
The story focuses mostly on their race to restart LLIAM and outlines — but doesn't dig deeply into — the interesting details of the catastrophe the shutdown has set off worldwide. But he (yes, LLIAM is a 'he,' by the end) is a terrifying window into the future, either way.
The House on Buzzards Bay
THE HOUSE ON BUZZARDS BAY (Viking, 276 pp., $30) is set in a seemingly placid town on the southern coast of Massachusetts. It's here that a group of old friends gather for a vacation that, alas, isn't going to be very fun.
Jim, whose great-great grandmother built the house, is desperate to resurrect the closeness they all shared in college, now 20 years ago. But the house seems improbably out of sorts, and not everyone shares Jim's nostalgia.
'To keeping things just as they are and never swerving,' one of the group, Bruce, says in a sarcastic toast. 'May we live in museums of generations past.'
Things boil over one night when Jim and Bruce exchange angry words, and more. The next morning, Bruce is gone, his room cleared out. Perhaps he's left in a huff. 'It was so like him,' Jim thinks.
Murphy's dispassionate style brings to mind the novels of Javier Marías or Katie Kitamura, even as matters in his book descend into the inexplicable. Several people report having frightening, vivid dreams about sex and violence. A mysterious and beguiling woman turns up, declaring that Bruce invited her but acting unruffled by his absence.
She also claims to have been married three times, though she looks like she's 25. 'I'm beginning to suspect you appeared this summer with an agenda,' Jim observes.
This novel is oddly unclassifiable, and the ending leaves you wondering. Is it a 'Big Chill'-esque story about old friends who learn that the past is a different country? A novel about a haunted house in a malevolent town that doesn't much like outsiders? A murder mystery? Maybe it's all those things.