A review by manwithanagenda
Duplicate Keys by Jane Smiley
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
When I found a Jane Smiley title I'd never heard of before, I decided I'd find out some more about her as an author. She truly is a literary chameleon, interested in taking on different genres and styles, and, two for two, telling a great story. 'Duplicate Keys' centers on Alice Ellis and her close-knit group of friends who have kept together since college. One morning Alice discovers two of them murdered in an apartment for which all of them held keys.
The mystery and thriller aspects might move slower than the typical novel in the genre, but I appreciated the extra time spent developing Alice and her relationships with her friends, full of reticence and habit, running hot and cold over different periods of her life, it felt very real to me. My own group of friends that date back to my teens may not match up with Alice's, but the dynamics of such long relationships were there, and the necessity of suspecting those friends of murder justifies Alice's constant reassessment and wool-gathering. When Smiley does decide to spike up the tension she delivers a couple scenes worthy of a thriller!. A little excessive of me, but I'm going to try to follow my impulses a little more, seeing as how much that worked out in here.
The mystery and thriller aspects might move slower than the typical novel in the genre, but I appreciated the extra time spent developing Alice and her relationships with her friends, full of reticence and habit, running hot and cold over different periods of her life, it felt very real to me. My own group of friends that date back to my teens may not match up with Alice's, but the dynamics of such long relationships were there, and the necessity of suspecting those friends of murder justifies Alice's constant reassessment and wool-gathering. When Smiley does decide to spike up the tension she delivers a couple scenes worthy of a thriller!. A little excessive of me, but I'm going to try to follow my impulses a little more, seeing as how much that worked out in here.