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A threatening landscape, the arrival of all of a mother\u2019s worldly goods without explanation, and the mysterious world of a suddenly closed Nevada observatory, set the stage for this debut novel.<\/p>\n
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Observer<\/i>opens in a canyon where signs of life are vanishing as the inanimate remnants anticipate the return of a \u201cflying creature\u201d that might be responsible and is now lying in wait to end \u201cyou.\u201d From this strange start, the story quickly transitions to Renata and the two family members with whom she lives. Renata struggles to find out about the mother she barely knew, a woman who seems to have chosen a career in science over having a daughter, and quickly realizes that the desert her mother studied is not the empty place one might imagine. Their past and current interactions and how they are now responding to what they assume is the death of Renata\u2019s mother, Corinne, are complicated and suggest that each person has unrevealed and unresolved feelings about their family and about Corinne.<\/p>\n
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As Renata reads from a journal about her mother\u2019s work in the desert, she is fascinated by connections to a diary written in the early twentieth century by a surveyor whose notes have similarities to those written by her mother. This propels Renata into a journey through what becomes, simultaneously, a dream-memory landscape and a desert death-nightmare. Time and human contact seem less real and the hidden life of the desert more real.<\/p>\n
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Nicholas Russell\u2019s writing is infused with mystery and is, at times, phantasmagoric– which corresponds to Renata\u2019s experience of her mother as a type of mirage. This image contrasts the experiences of the surveyor with her mother’s scientific account while casting doubt on the science. Francis Brown\u2019s diary records how he \u201cwitnessed visitations\u201d and \u201cexperienced them.\u201d He did not view them as \u201cencounters with the devil\u201d but \u201cfailures of the rational mind to comprehend its surroundings with any reliability or discernment.\u201d Brown concludes, \u201cWe imagine monsters\u201d but \u201cwhat frightens me is not their existence, but our fatal sensory impotence.\u201d<\/p>\n
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While Brown opines a human lack of awareness, Russell recognizes where horror comes from and draws us slowly to it, all the while making us wonder when it will rear its supernatural head. This promising novelist\u2019s work conjures a Western Gothic feel through prose that sketches the recognizable yet odd characters and delineates the menacing setting in that disquieting way you can\u2019t quite put your finger on. What will Russell do next? Whatever it is, hopefully it\u2019s soon!<\/p>\n
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Reviewed by Nova Hadley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Observer by Nicholas Russell HarperCollins, 2026 (pre-order) ISBN-13: 978-0063452398 Available: Hardcover, Audiobook, Kindle, MP3CD Buy:\u00a0Bookshop.org A threatening landscape, the arrival of all of a mother\u2019s worldly goods without explanation, and the mysterious world of a suddenly closed Nevada observatory, set the stage for this debut novel. Observeropens in a canyon where signs of<\/p>\n
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![\"Observer](\"https:\/\/images-us.bookshop.org\/ingram\/9780063452398.jpg?v=4eb23f5dadc3042d789e73c0b577d769&width=600\")
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