Book Review: Good Half Gone

Synopsis:

Iris Walsh saw her twin sister Piper get kidnapped. Why does no one believe her?

Iris narrowly escaped her pretty, popular twin sister’s fate as a teenager. She was kidnapped and trafficked, long gone before the police finally agreed to investigate. Months later, Piper’s newborn son, Callum, was dropped on their estranged mother’s doorstep in the dead of night with a note in Piper’s handwriting signed simply, “Twin.”

Now an adult, Iris just wants one thing — proof. Because she knows exactly who took Piper all those years ag, and she has a pretty good idea who Callum’s father is. She just has to get close enough to prove it.

And if the police won’t help, she’ll just have to do it her own way: interning at the isolated Shoal Island Hospital for the criminally insane. Where her target is kept locked away.

But Iris soon realizes that something sinister is bubbling beneath the surface of Shoal Island and the patients aren’t the only ones being observed . . .

Review:

Iris and her twin sister, Piper, were just fifteen years old when Iris witnessed Piper’s kidnapping. Piper was grabbed by three men who also took Iris’s phone, so she ran back into the movie theater where the manager let her use the phone there to summon help and confirmed for police that Iris had indeed arrived with a girl who looked exactly like her. The girls lived with their grandmother, Betty, because their mother, Virginia, was an addict, incapable of caring for them, who lost custody when a teacher requested a wellness check. Every year, on the anniversary of Piper’s abduction, Iris listens to the recording of the 911 call she placed from the lobby of the theater. From her perspective, the police were slow to respond, asking questions that seemed irrelevant. “They were stuck on the phone thing. They wanted to know why the men would take my phone.” The police insinuated that Piper voluntarily left with the three men, abandoning her sister at the theater. Officers patronized and placated Iris, who was “hysterical” and already riddled with shame because “I’d lost my sister. Gran told me to take care of her, and now she was gone,” she recalls. Piper had become “boy crazy” and expelled for engaging in inappropriate behavior with them on campus. Even though Piper claimed to have changed – and become religious — Gran was emphatic: “Don’t let her out of your sight. I mean in. I’m not raising her babies.” Iris learns that Piper’s kidnappers were supposed to grab both of them and is further engulfed in survivor’s guilt.

Three years after Piper’s disappearance, Gran and Iris were able to move into a cozy Seattle home left to Gran by an aunt. It is there they are raising Callum, now nine years old. Thirteen months after Piper vanished, he was left, with the umbilical cord still attached, on Virginia’s doorstep in a box with a blanket and a note: “Iris, daughter of no one, please take care of my son. His name is Callum.” It was signed, “Twin,” and Iris instantly recognized the handwriting as Piper’s. Iris has never understood why, if Piper is still alive, she would leave her child and, more curiously, why she would leave his with their mother, of all people.

Iris and Piper were very different. Piper was popular, while Iris had only a few friends with whom she did not interact outside of school. They fought, deliberately antagonizing each other as only siblings can. But they loved each other and because of their experiences with their mother, who would disappear during drug-induced hazes, leaving the girls on their own for days at a time, “Piper wouldn’t disappear for a night and not tell us. She was a free spirit but a considerate one.”

Iris is now twenty-three years old. Virigina, an unabashed narcissist, is serving a five-year prison sentence for armed robbery and maintains she is “born again.” At sixty-seven, Gran has already survived an ischemic stroke and heart attack, and Iris worries about her health, always careful not to upset her. Iris, who has spent years balancing her studies, caring for Callum, and obsessively searching for Piper, has been accepted into an internship program at Shoal Island Hospital to which she was encouraged to apply by one of her professors. It is a private hospital for the mentally ill, teetering on a cliff and reachable only by ferry. She is convinced that the man responsible for Piper’s abduction resides there. And she is going to at last learn her sister’s fate.

Dr. Leo Grayson is a renowned celebrity psychotherapist who holds two doctorate degrees and has authored several bestselling books. But he has been out of the spotlight for a number of years, and now in his mid-forties, Internet searches only produce the same photos of him taken years ago. He is the only doctor on staff at Shoal Island, which opened in 1944 but has been renovated many times since. Originally an army outpost, it later served as a prison and a home for unwed mothers. Only forty patients are housed there, each one a violent offender who never stood trial because they were ruled incompetent to do so by the courts. Iris will not be dissuaded from breaking any rule necessary in order to access D Hall where five patients are merely housed in solitary confinement, with no effort made to rehabilitate them. She is warned never to venture there unless accompanied by the doctor. But Iris is anxious to do just that, and participate in their therapy sessions, because she has studied all five of them and is certain. “One of them killed my sister.” She does not expect to find herself attracted to the handsome and charming Dr. Grayson . . . and confiding in him. Could that prove to be a fatal mistake?

Through a somewhat unreliable first-person narrative from Iris, which alternates between the past and present, author Tarryn Fisher relates a story that is heartbreaking and full of shocking twists. Iris is a sympathetic character. A steadfast sister who, despite conflicts with her twin, remans devoted to finding out what happened to her and seeking justice not just for Piper, but also for Callum, the innocent little boy who has never known his mother. Iris immediately devoted herself to Callum, enrolling in a home school program so she could serve as his surrogate mother. She adores Gran, a scrappy, streetwise woman who has seen more than her share of disappointment during a life as an exotic dancer, prison guard, and, eventually, librarian. Iris lovingly describes her as “resourceful, tough, smart – and one hundred percent unapologetic. My hero.” She is all too aware of who and what Virginia is, and fiercely protective of her granddaughters and little Callum. The novel succeeds as an examination of the family dynamics, especially the sisters’ relationship. Fisher also credibly depicts the teenage struggles of Iris and Piper, who have vastly different personalities, but are both impacted by childhood traumas. It is also an indictment of police officers who are embroiled in their own scandals and far too quick to write Piper off as just a troubled girl who decided to run away.

Iris is certain that only Gran knows the real reason she applied for the internship, but as Fisher gradually reveals clues to Piper’s fate, it becomes clear that the missing girl naively got involved with people who had nefarious motives. And Iris has brazenly but perhaps foolishly embarked on a mission that has placed her in grave danger.

The mystery surrounding Piper’s kidnapping is an intriguing exploration of contemporary topics including drug abuse and human trafficking, in addition to teenage angst. The gothic atmosphere at Shoal Island effectively heightens the dramatic tension. It is an ominous, oppressive, and frightening setting populated by interesting characters who may or may not compound the dangers Iris faces. The story’s pace accelerates to an action-packed climax, but that aspect of the story is less successful. The ending arrives abruptly and feels rushed, although it is replete with surprises that readers will never quite be able to guess. Fisher provides answers, resolving all aspects of the mindboggling story and bringing it to a satisfying conclusion with a distinctly cinematic quality, albeit through a circuitous route that is ridiculously far-fetched, even for a psychological thriller, a genre which regularly requires readers to suspend their disbelief to varying degrees.

Despite the ending, Good Half Gone is entertaining and absorbing, and readers will find themselves unable to resist cheering for Iris, Gran, and, of course, Callum.

Excerpt from Good Half Gone

Also by Tarryn Fisher:

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one electronic copy of Good Half Gone free of charge from the author via Net Galley. I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own. This disclosure complies with 16 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 255, Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.