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Summary: How I came to write DESIRE LINES
Review: Novels evolve from the strangest sources -- some traceable and some not -- and eventually, if you're lucky, they take on life of their own. For me, creating a novel is a slow process of layering memory, imagination, and facts into a coherent story. I start with a tangible if sketchy idea and fill it out with bits and pieces of my own past, stories I've heard, newspaper and magazine articles, fragments of songs, characters in movies, dreams, half-remembered conversations, and my own imagination, the sources of which are often impossible to delineate.DESIRE LINES was originally based on two specific events. The first is personal. During the winter of my first year of college, my best friend from high school was hitchhiking home to Bangor, Maine, from New Hampshire in a blinding snowstorm when he was hit by an eighteen-wheeler. Danny wasn't killed, but for all intents and purposes he disappeared that day. He exists now in what they call a semi-conscious coma. The friend I knew and loved, the one with an audacious wit and oversized personality, vanished, replaced by someone who couldn't move or communicate -- and probably never will. I have tried to write about Danny many times, but never with any success. This novel is the closest I may ever come to wrestling with how his "disappearance" affected me and the others who know him. The second event that inspired this novel is a murder that took place in a small Maine town in the summer of 1980. Joyce McLain, a high school senior, disappeared one evening while jogging near her home. Two days later she was found raped and strangled; the killer was never identified. I was a teenager myself at the time, and this event made a big impression on me. Years later, when I began thinking about writing a novel, I looked up the case files. I was intrigued with how the unresolved nature of the murder made its impact so much stronger. The fact that Joyce's killer remains at large meant that no one -- her family, her friends and neighbors -- could put it behind them. As a result, the town itself seemed to be harboring a secret. In researching DESIRE LINES, I spent a summer in Bangor interviewing reporters at the Bangor Daily News, members of the Bangor Police Department, and former students from Bangor High. I compiled articles, police logs, maps, and missing persons' reports from all over the country. In the archives of the BDN alone I found scores of missing persons reports. Most people who go missing turn up, dead or alive, within several weeks. Many are children abducted by an estranged parent; some are teens who run away to escape abuse or family strife. Businessmen abscond with company funds; housewives take off with secret lovers. But a surprising number of people never turn up at all. I did not set out to write a traditional whodunit. Though Jennifer's disappearance is not explained until the end, it is probably apparent by the third section of the book that one character in particular knows more about it than he or she is telling. I was more interested in exploring how understanding what happened to Jennifer helps my main character, Kathryn, come to terms with events in her own life. I also wanted to examine how the passing of time affects people, the directions that relationships take over the years, what happens when minds and emotions get stuck in time, and how the seeds of the present can be found in the past. Finally, I wanted to look at what home means, and how we define it.
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Summary: Excellent description of effect of teenager's disappearance
Review: Reviewers seem to either love or hate this novel, there seems to be no in-between. I loved it and couldn't put this book down. I was drawn into the mystery, wanting to know the answer, but at the same time, not wanting the book to end. This is a beautifully written description of small town American life with the focus on how people come to terms with their past and learn how to move on. Highly recommended.
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Summary: A made-for-TV-movie-book....
Review: Stolid, linear, perfectly grammatical. A mildly intriguing
idea that keeps you reading...I laughed once or twice...
frowned once or twice. Yawn. Did I read that this author went to Yale? Just goes to show that an ivy league education has nothing to do with having a vivid imagination. Images, details are painted in here and there. It's a S-T-O-R-Y. With an obligatory beginning, middle,ending, and flashbacks. Do they have Erector Sets for novels? Hey, this could be the model.
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Summary: Compelling reading...
Review: The Boston Globe's glowing review led me to this book and I found I couldn't put it down. Kathryn 's coming to terms w/ loss, divorce and disconnection grabbed my attention more than the mystery of her friend's disappearance - though that too contributed to my staying up way too late last night reading!
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Summary: depressingly mediocre
Review: This books lacks both the ferocious, ironic psychological insight and stylistic verve of the best fiction, and the trashy, sexy, honestly lowbrow, no-holds-barred fun of the worst. Kline's novel is embarrassingly self-serious, anemic, empty, soulless, the literary equivalent of Slim-Fast -- sure, reading it'll make the time go by (and it sure won't make you fat), but where's the beef?
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Summary: Very well written novel that balances it all
Review: This is the second novel I have ready by this author. I enjoyed Sweet Water very much and this novel did not disappoint either. The author does an excellent job of slowly letting the story unravel naturally. Characters are very realistic as are their relationships and the strains between people, even with the passing of time. I found this book very readable and am surprised it is already out of print and didn't really make much of a showing. The writer is extremely talented and the mystery absorbed me as a reader. I reccommend finding a used copy from one of the amazon used booksellers. I'm glad I did.
Rating:
Summary: Very well written novel that balances it all
Review: This is the second novel I have ready by this author. I enjoyed Sweet Water very much and this novel did not disappoint either. The author does an excellent job of slowly letting the story unravel naturally. Characters are very realistic as are their relationships and the strains between people, even with the passing of time. I found this book very readable and am surprised it is already out of print and didn't really make much of a showing. The writer is extremely talented and the mystery absorbed me as a reader. I reccommend finding a used copy from one of the amazon used booksellers. I'm glad I did.
Rating: 
Summary: Ho Hum
Review: This was a quick afternoon's beach read--I may not have finished it if I had packed another book to read. No great literary value here-- in fact, the story had a lot of holes in it, so I was forced to use my imagination. In Bangor, Maine, on the night of her high school graduation in 1986, Jennifer Pelletier, Kathryn Campbell's best (she thought) friend, just disappeared from the face of the earth. She walked away from a bonfire and was never seen again. Ten years later, a few weeks before their class reunion, Kathryn, recently divorced, returns to her mother's home in Bangor. She is still haunted by Jennifer's disappearance with its lack of closure and begins to write an article for the local paper, resurrecting the case in the eyes of the town and those who knew the missing girl. I DID learn one thing from this book: the meaning of "desire lines". This means the trail through woods or brush, often barely discernible, showing that someone else has walked there before. It is a term used in orienteering and hiking.
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Summary: bland and so-what but trying very hard to be more
Review: Well... I don't usually write reviews, but for some reason this book makes me want to, and not because I liked it. I think there's so much hype in the media, and not enough real standards. I bought this book because of the Boston Globe review like another reader but didn't agree at all with the reviewer. I think her writing is really sort of boring, and the story didn't grab me at all even though I kept reading, waiting for the good parts the reviewer had assured me would be there. Oh well -- I'm wiser now. But -- as far as the story goes -- my feeling is basically, SO WHAT? I wasn't moved or involved, and kept noticing how she never gave any real physical detail or made her characters come to life. I want more from books, something more real. I don't recommend this one.
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