Five Roses

Zorn's second novel (Arrhythmia) wavers between being a thriller and literary fiction and so does not succeed at being either. Fara is a middle-class young woman looking to purchase her first home with her husband. Rose is all alone in Montreal after moving to the city from the secluded cabin in the woods where she was raised. Maddy makes do by renting a couple of rooms out in the little house she owns. The three come together in the gritty but gentrifying Montreal neighborhood of Pointe St-Charles. Fara and her husband, Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric, move in next door to Maddy. All three women are haunted by similar ghosts: Fara by the suicide of her sister; Maddy by the loss of her infant daughter, who was kidnapped 27 years earlier and never returned; and Rose by the death of her mother. The interwoven narratives that Zorn attempts don't quite work, because she does not develop her characters or their motivations deeply enough to carry readers with her into the intersections of their lives or to make the plot revelations feel like bombshells. Agent: Shaun Bradley, Transatlantic Agency. (Aug.)