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A review by rbreade
The Night Gwen Stacy Died by Sarah Bruni
Bruni makes clever use of the events chronicled in issue 121 of The Amazing Spider-Man, especially the one that gives her book its title: the ambiguous death of Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker's first girlfriend, with its never-answered question of whether the Green Goblin or Parker's alter-ego, Spider-Man, was ultimately responsible for her death. Sheila Gower is a 17-year-old high school senior working in a gas station, of all places, in Coralville, Iowa, saving money to move to France after graduation; she has no real plan, though, and it's clear that what she really wants is a life anywhere else but Coralville, Iowa. The 28-year-old man whose identity will eventually be revealed as Seth Novak, but who is known to Sheila for much of the novel as Peter Parker, drives a taxi in Coralville and frequently stops in the gas stain for cigarettes and conversation. Among the things she learns about him is that his brother, Jake, died of an intentional pill overdose when Peter/Seth was seven or eight.
Except he didn't die, as we eventually learn; he recovered, left town, and moved to Chicago, leaving Seth to believe he'd died. Reality for Peter/Seth is a tricky thing, and what we watch as the novel unfolds is the convergence, through a series of coincidences and actions necessary to life on the lam with a teenage runaway (Sheila), whom the world believes Peter/Seth has kidnapped at gunpoint (though the truth is more complicated), of Seth/Peter's and Sheila/Gwen's resemblance to the comic book characters, and the resemblance of their story arc to that of issue 121.
Though Bruni doesn't definitively address the question of Peter/Seth's apparent pre-cognitive ability--Spider-Man's "spider-sense"--it doesn't substantially detract from the suspense of the main story-line, which is the meeting, after 20 years of Seth believing his brother dead (though this lack of knowledge might be a product of Seth's unusual relationship with reality), of Seth and his brother Jake.
Except he didn't die, as we eventually learn; he recovered, left town, and moved to Chicago, leaving Seth to believe he'd died. Reality for Peter/Seth is a tricky thing, and what we watch as the novel unfolds is the convergence, through a series of coincidences and actions necessary to life on the lam with a teenage runaway (Sheila), whom the world believes Peter/Seth has kidnapped at gunpoint (though the truth is more complicated), of Seth/Peter's and Sheila/Gwen's resemblance to the comic book characters, and the resemblance of their story arc to that of issue 121.
Though Bruni doesn't definitively address the question of Peter/Seth's apparent pre-cognitive ability--Spider-Man's "spider-sense"--it doesn't substantially detract from the suspense of the main story-line, which is the meeting, after 20 years of Seth believing his brother dead (though this lack of knowledge might be a product of Seth's unusual relationship with reality), of Seth and his brother Jake.