An Invisible Woman

Rating:
Summary: Assured, compelling, and full of promise
Review: If you were to look up the definition of "New York socialite" in the dictionary, one gets the feeling you would find Kealy Ryerson's picture beside it. Born into a wealthy family, Kealy is married to James Ryerson, a wildly successful if improbably principled defense attorney; has two children enrolled in private schools; and a maid to clean up after her on a daily basis. On the cusp of middle age, she is able to afford the surgical touch-ups and carefully applied cosmetics that let her rage against the dimming, if not dying, of the light. Her life and accruements vanish from her in the space of a few short minutes. She receives a terse telephone call from her husband, telling her in no uncertain terms to gather up their children and leave the country. Minutes later, he is dead, and Kealy is on her own, and on the run, in ways she never could have imagined.

So begins AN INVISIBLE WOMAN, Anne Strieber's debut novel. This is an incredibly ambitious work, though Strieber's reach occasionally exceeds her grasp. There are a few problems here. The pacing of this work is intermittent. Quite a bit happens at the beginning, but then the reader is left stumbling in Kealy's wake for just a bit too long as she and her children find that their avenues of escape are cut off even as they are pursued by the same shadowy assassins who have killed not only her husband but also his private investigator and a New York District attorney with whom James Ryerson was improbably having lunch.

Daughter Allison, a bit too precocious for her own good, just happens to be school roomies with a streetwise black teenager named Lushawn Davis, who just happens to have a noble but shady uncle who plays a major role later on. The Davis family apartment becomes the port in the dangerous storm gathering around what is left of the Ryerson family. Kealy soon finds that not only is a group of hit men after her, but also that the entire city is looking for her, thanks to a reward being offered by the police department, whose chief is --- interestingly enough --- her ex-husband.

As I indicated, AN INVISIBLE WOMAN is a complicated book, and it takes Strieber a number of pages to set up the events. But don't dash yet; once things are in place, this tale becomes quite interesting indeed. Kealy finds herself hiding in the middle of a marginal working class neighborhood without her clothes, makeup, or any of the adornments that tell the world who she is and where she comes from. She therefore becomes nondescript, and invisible. She is able to attend her husband's funeral without any of her friends, including her ex-husband, recognizing her. She is shooed away from high-end boutiques, which she used to patronize, and is even able to infiltrate her husband's law office as a cleaning woman.

Yet at the same time, while staying with the Davis family, she becomes glaringly visible, the only white woman within blocks of their humble apartment. Strieber sets up a delicious dichotomy here, wherein Kealy resents both her simultaneous status as a non-entity and a very visible target. She wants the safe, predictable life that she had only days before. Now, with only her wits, and an uneasy and grudging partnership with Lushawn's ex-convict uncle, Kealy slowly begins to use her invisibility against her pursuers, in a bid to regain her life and obtain justice --- and revenge --- on behalf of her murdered husband.

AN INVISIBLE WOMAN might have been a better book, but the ultimate villain and motive of the piece was somewhat vague and unformed. There were certainly enough issues and events left open at the end to form the basis for a sequel, but given what occurred here, I don't know that enough would be left open to sustain another suspense novel. Strieber, however, demonstrates great promise as a writer, and when she does hit the mark --- particularly in the second half --- her work is striking, assured, and compelling. I look forward to more, and better, from her in the future.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub