About this item
Highlights
- An Entertainment Weekly "Must Read" - One of the NPR Book Concierge's "Best Books of the Year" "Twisty and told from multiple perspectives, this meaty thriller races to a satisfying finish.
- About the Author: CHRISTOPHER J. YATES was born and raised in Kent and studied law at Oxford University before working as a puzzle editor in London.
- 352 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Thrillers
Description
Book Synopsis
An Entertainment Weekly "Must Read" - One of the NPR Book Concierge's "Best Books of the Year"
"Twisty and told from multiple perspectives, this meaty thriller races to a satisfying finish." --People magazine
"The intensity of the storytelling is exhilarating and unsettling." --Booklist (starred review)
Twenty-six years ago Hannah had her eye shot out. Now she wants justice. But is she blind to the truth?
Christopher J. Yates's cult hit Black Chalk introduced that rare writerly talent: a literary writer who could write a plot with the intricacy of a brilliant mental puzzle, and with characters so absorbing that readers are immediately gripped. Yates's new book does not disappoint. Grist Mill Road is a dark, twisted, and expertly plotted Rashomon-style tale. The year is 1982; the setting, an Edenic hamlet some ninety miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends--Patrick, Matthew, and Hannah--are bound together by a terrible and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves never could have predicted, the three meet again--with even more devastating results.
Review Quotes
The plot is darkly, intricately layered, full of pitfalls and switchbacks, smart and funny and moving and merciless; the characters are all that and more. This is a powerful exploration of how truth isn't a complete and immutable thing, or a pure force of redemption: it's made up of broken shards that lie buried somewhere in the spaces between people, and when the jagged edges work their way to the surface, they can be devastating." --Tana French, author of the New York Times bestselling In the Woods and The Trespasser
"Arresting...Twisting backward and forward in time, entering the minds of each character in turn, Yates examines both how they reached this point and what happens years later, when the past wreaks havoc on the present....[A] sophisticated...elegant narrative." --The New York Times
"Two of life's delicious pleasures--gourmet delectations and a sinister, plot-twisty tale--come together in this intelligent thriller." --Oprah.com "The intensity of the storytelling is exhilarating and unsettling." --Booklist (starred review) "An intricately crafted novel about adult lives forever changed by closely held childhood secrets. Grist Mill Road is a compulsive read that will unsettle you from its first page and surprise you until its very last." --Jung Yun, author of Shelter "Grist Mill Road is full of tension and unexpected twists." --Angela Carone, San Diego Magazine "5 Books to Read in January" "Yates constructed a thrilling psychological puzzle in his first novel, Black Chalk. With his second, he's written an even more complex and propulsive whodunnit laced with questions about moral responsibility, the relativity of truth, the reliability of memory and the long-term consequences of our actions." --Jane Ciabattari, BBC.COM "10 Books to Read in 2018
About the Author
CHRISTOPHER J. YATES was born and raised in Kent and studied law at Oxford University before working as a puzzle editor in London. He lives in New York City with his wife and dog. His first book, Black Chalk, was an NPR "Best of the Year" selection.