The Winter Girl
Matt Marinovich, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385539975
Summary
A scathing and exhilarating thriller that begins with a husband's obsession with the seemingly vacant house next door.
It's wintertime in the Hamptons, where Scott and his wife, Elise, have come to be with her terminally ill father, Victor, to await the inevitable.
As weeks turn to months, their daily routine—Elise at the hospital with her father, Scott pretending to work and drinking Victor's booze—only highlights their growing resentment and dissatisfaction with the usual litany of unhappy marriages: work, love, passion, each other.
But then Scott notices something simple, even innocuous. Every night at precisely eleven, the lights in the neighbor's bedroom turn off. It's clearly a timer...but in the dead of winter with no one else around, there's something about that light he can't let go of.
So one day while Elise is at the hospital, he breaks in. And he feels a jolt of excitement he hasn't felt in a long time. Soon, it's not hard to enlist his wife as a partner in crime and see if they can't restart the passion.
Their one simple transgression quickly sends husband and wife down a deliriously wicked spiral of bad decisions, infidelities, escalating violence, and absolutely shocking revelations.
Matt Marinovich makes a strong statement with this novel. The Winter Girl is the psychological thriller done to absolute perfection. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1966
• Where—N/A
• Education—M.F.A., Emerson College
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Matt Marinovich is the author of The Winter Girl (2016) and Strange Skies (2007). He has worked as a freelance writer, manuscript editor, copy writer, and adjunct professor.
He has worked as an editor at Interview, Martha Stewart Living, People, and Real Simple. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Esquire.com, Salon, Quarterly West, Open City, Barcelona Review, Mississippi Review, Poets & Writers, and other publications.
He lives in Brooklyn. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A]bsorbing thriller [about]...Scott and Elise, a troubled couple...staying in the house of Elise’s abusive and dying father, Victor.... The revelations...seem rushed at times, and Scott’s own motivations aren’t always clear. Still, this is an engrossing, disquieting read for a chilly night.
Publishers Weekly
Family secrets and marital transgressions weave a suspenseful Hitchcockian story of intrigue, mystery, and deceit.... Marinovich offers a promising premise with a disturbing, fast-paced plot. While the ending may leave something to be desired, this is a quick read for fans of psychological thrillers. —Carolann Curry, Mercer Univ. Lib., Macon, GA
Library Journal
The twists are clever and the pacing relentless.
Booklist
[A] psychological thriller.... It starts with promise.... [but the] novel's second half devolves into a noisy, almost parodic noir, with too much coincidence, too many nested secrets, and too many people acting according to motives that seem cooked up.... But it all moves briskly, and the beginning is compelling enough to keep the reader turning pages.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions.)
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they more one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you, the reader, begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers are skillful at hiding clues in plain sight. How well does the author hide the clues in this work?
4. Does the author use red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray?
5. Talk about plot's twists & turns—those surprising developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense? Are they plausible? Or do the twists & turns feel forced and preposterous—inserted only to extend the story.
6. Does the author ratchet up the story's suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? How does the author build suspense?
7. What about the ending—is it satisfying? Is it probable or believable? Does it grow out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 2). Or does the ending come out of the blue? Does it feel forced...tacked-on...or a cop-out? Or perhaps it's too predictable. Can you envision a better, or different, ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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