Rating: 
Summary: A great book.
Review: In retrospect, this book was wonderful. If I'm not hooked within the first few pages of a book, I will often put it down. I felt like this book got off to a "strange" start. That is the only reason I didn't give it five stars. However, once I got past the first 30 or 40 pages, I couldn't put it down!
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Psychological Suspense
Review: In this book, Peter Moore Smith explores two interconnected concepts that occur in the lives of characters: unraveling, and raveling. At the beginning of the book, both Pilot Airie, the main character, and his family are unraveled. Pilot is unraveled becuase he has suffered a schizophrenic episode, and must struggle to regain his sanity and ideals. With the help of his therapist, Katherine DeQuincy-Joy, Pilot begins to put his life back together. However, his psychological issues stem from a deeper family problem - the disappearance of his sister Fiona twenty years ago. At the hospital, Pilot begins to understand that the process of raveling will never be complete until he figures out what has happened to his sister, and that their stories are interconnected. He must decipher which of his memories are real and which are the product of his mental illness. Raveling keeps the reader in suspense until the end. The separate strands of the mystery and the psychology of Pilot are well woven and keep the story moving. Overall, the book was very enjoyable.
Rating: 
Summary: How well do you know your family?
Review: In this jarring mystery, a psychologist by the name of Katherine DeQuincey-Joy (with a hyphen) finds herself embroiled in the tragedies and mysteries of a broken family. She quickly finds herself stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Pilot Airie, her patient, obviously needs her. Having suffered a psychotic episode and being diagnosed with schizophrenia, Pilot's not an incredibly reliable source. Or so Katherine continues to tell herself, because if he was, then Katherine certainly shouldn't be getting involved with Pilot's older brother Eric, whom Pilot accuses of murdering their younger sister years ago. ... And that's that. I don't know what to really say about this book. The writing style and perspective shifts were rather disjointed, confusing, but then, I think that was intentional. I had a gut feeling about all but the most minute details of the ending about halfway through the book, and I don't think that that came from any special talent of mine. I found myself constantly distracted by little details which were ceaselessly referred to but never explained, even as the book ended. I honestly hoped for a sloppy epilogue where the half dozen details that had been pestering me would be ironed out. I can't honestly say that I would recommend this book to anyone, even readers of grocery store rack mysteries. I don't know that I would go so far as to say that my time was wasted with this book, since the style was actually unique and interesting for a while, but it's certainly not going to be reread.
Rating:
Summary: Clever, but not a thriller!
Review: It took about 50 pages to get into it and then another 50 to figure out what was going on. Once I got this far the only reason I finished was to see if I was right. Near the end it got a little more interesting with a plot turn and then it was over and I was right. Clever and complicated. Not beach reading.
Rating: 
Summary: You won't forget it easily
Review: My 5 star pick of the month. Don't know when I've enjoyed a psychological thriller such as this one in a long time. It's intellectually stimulating as well as unpredictable. You won't be sure who is the killer until the bitter end. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: A classic example of an unreliable narrator
Review: Oops! I hope I didn't spill the beans... What drew me to this book was its amazing cover. Not that you should judge books by thier covers, but in this case the contents match the cover rather closely: a mystery involving spooky woods, sibling rivalry, and a child's dissapearance. There are no chapter breaks, only "episodes of consciousness," in which the narrator slips into omniscence. It's a good first novel, except for some inconsistencies in the voice and point of view, which are necessitated by the "surprise" ending.
Rating:
Summary: A TEN-STAR, PERFECT PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER!
Review: Peter Moore Smith has reinvented an entire genre in "Raveling", his first novel. Calling this an ordinary thriller or even a ghost story would be an insult to his talent as a writer and to the reader as well. Anyone who enjoys a book that you can't seem to leave far from hand, or a story that wraps its cold, chilling tendrils of suspense around the very center of your being...owe yourselves this book. The Aerie family has unraveled. The fabric of their lives quickly came apart when Fiona, the youngest child, disappears one small day, which no one notices until a day too late. But...one suspects that these threads had worked their way loose long before that. Her disappearance is merely the catalyst for events that were already well on their way. James, the father, is an airline pilot who would much rather lose himself in the heavens than deal with the mundane matters of family down on Earth. Hannah, the mother, is the keeper of secrets so heinous that they cause her to go blind. Ironically, she begins to "see" her missing daughter in strange hallucinations, 20 years after she disappeared. Eric, the golden child and brilliant neurosurgeon, seems to be the glue that is holding everyone together. And Pilot...the younger brother and teller of this haunting and beautiful tale...is diagnosed with schizophrenia after he is found in the woods behind the family home, reverted completely to an animal state. Committed to a local institution, it is here that the chilling tale of the Airie family begins to come to light. Revealing any more about this fantastic novel would be to give away the ultimate pleasure of reading it. The story is told in a hauntingly poetic and visionary voice...the characters drawn in strokes that are delicate with nuance, and bold in action. The definitive story of a family fraught destructive secrets and the havoc that keeping those secrets causes, "Raveling" is added to my top-ten list of all-time favorite reads. I can only impatiently wait for Smith's next stunning foray into literature, with bated breath.
Rating:
Summary: A TEN-STAR, PERFECT PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER!
Review: Peter Moore Smith has reinvented an entire genre in "Raveling", his first novel. Calling this an ordinary thriller or even a ghost story would be an insult to his talent as a writer and to the reader as well. Anyone who enjoys a book that you can't seem to leave far from hand, or a story that wraps its cold, chilling tendrils of suspense around the very center of your being...owe yourselves this book. The Aerie family has unraveled. The fabric of their lives quickly came apart when Fiona, the youngest child, disappears one small day, which no one notices until a day too late. But...one suspects that these threads had worked their way loose long before that. Her disappearance is merely the catalyst for events that were already well on their way. James, the father, is an airline pilot who would much rather lose himself in the heavens than deal with the mundane matters of family down on Earth. Hannah, the mother, is the keeper of secrets so heinous that they cause her to go blind. Ironically, she begins to "see" her missing daughter in strange hallucinations, 20 years after she disappeared. Eric, the golden child and brilliant neurosurgeon, seems to be the glue that is holding everyone together. And Pilot...the younger brother and teller of this haunting and beautiful tale...is diagnosed with schizophrenia after he is found in the woods behind the family home, reverted completely to an animal state. Committed to a local institution, it is here that the chilling tale of the Airie family begins to come to light. Revealing any more about this fantastic novel would be to give away the ultimate pleasure of reading it. The story is told in a hauntingly poetic and visionary voice...the characters drawn in strokes that are delicate with nuance, and bold in action. The definitive story of a family fraught destructive secrets and the havoc that keeping those secrets causes, "Raveling" is added to my top-ten list of all-time favorite reads. I can only impatiently wait for Smith's next stunning foray into literature, with bated breath.
Rating:
Summary: I Loved This Book
Review: Peter Moore Smith has written a terrific book, full of suspense, interesting, quirky characters, a great finale. I hated myself for finishing it so fast. I would like to have known more about the hyphenated psychologist, but I realize I wouldn't have been satisfied if this book had been 1000 pages. I hope Mr. Smith is busy writing another book. I will recommend 'Raveling' to everyone. My only problem now - how can I start another book with Pilot and his crazy family still in my head?
Rating:
Summary: Decent (for once!) dysfuction-mongering
Review: Peter Moore Smith, Raveling (Little, Brown, 2000) Acclaimed short story writer Peter Moore Smith turns his talents to novel writing, and Raveling is his debut offering. It's been received with, to be kind, mixed reviews, probably because it's a genre novel-- but what genre it is is somewhat elusive. Pilot Airie is a diagnosed schizophrenic whose mental problems started after the abduction of his little sister twenty years before. His mother Hannah, who's almost as neurotic as Pilot is, has started seeing double; his brother Eric, a successful neurosurgeon, says it's psychosomatic. (Dad's off in Florida with the new girlfriend.) Welcome to Oprahland, where dysfunction reigns supreme. Smith puts a twist on it, though-- the story is completely told through the eyes of Pilot, who believes himself omniscient. Thus, we are forced to ask ourselves from page one, is any of this actually happening, or is it all in Pilot's head? And if it IS really happening, what does that say about the underlying message about schizophrenia and its relation to (what we shall call for lack of a better term) extrasensory powers? Sounds like a mystery, doesn't it? Well, perhaps, or it could be a novel of the dysfuctional-fiction genre, focusing on drawing the character of Pilot and having him interact with those around him. Or a historical novel-- not of the gothic-romance type, but a novel of the process of attempting to rebuild history (given Pilot's narration, the mystery isn't just about what happened to his sister, but about what's happened to his family over the twenty years following what happened to Fiona, see?). And this is, perhaps, where some reviewers are getting sidetracked; how you approach the book will probably lead to how you view the last half of it. If it's a conventional mystery, it very quickly gets predictable. I chose to look at it as a kind of Pilot-vs.-the-world story, or a coming-of-age book about a thirty-year-old schizophrenic, and that made all the difference. The solving of the mystery of Fiona is handled more in the sense of classical tragedy than contemporary mystery; you can see the ending coming a mile off, but that's because the solving of the mystery itself is a background to the players and their motives; the real mystery for the reader lies in Pilot himself. An enjoyable read, especially for a first novel. *** 1/2
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