The Uninvited (edition 2013)

A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother’s neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry.

Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger’s Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioural patterns and an outsider’s fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh’s Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh’s Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father. Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.

Another entry under ‘dystopian’, my current favourite genre, this seriously creepy novel had me talking and thinking about it for days after I had finished it. Anthropologist Hesketh’s narrative voice is perfect for this. He is good at spotting patterns, calm and detached from all the hysteria and when it does get too much he indulges in a bit of mental origami. Perfect

The use of cultural mythologies (the ancestor spirits in Japan, trolls in Sweden, djinn in the Middle East) in the story was very well done and really intrigued me in the build-up when nobody really knows what is going on.

The ending has come in for some criticism but I thought it was perfect, I knew enough already to kow it would be bad!
( )

The Uninvited opens with a scene of intense horror, as a young child slaughters her grandmother with a nail-gun to the neck. “No reason, no warning.” Everyone’s immediate reaction is that there has been a terrible accident, especially as the girl is found staring at the wall, as if in shock; but then she comes to herself, grabs the nail gun, and puts it to her father’s face and fires again. “One murder, one blinding. Two minutes. No accident.” The girl had just turned seven.
The narrator of the tale that begins with this incident is Hesketh, a man who lives in a stone cottage on the island of Arran in Scotland, an isolated place that suits a man who prefers solitude and has a job that doesn’t require him to appear at the Head Office with any great frequency. Hesketh is separated from Kaitlin, which necessarily separates him from her son, Freddy, who is the same age as the girl who shot her grandmother; Hesketh feels the loss of Freddy much more than he does the loss of Kaitlin. Hesketh uses his training in anthropology to find and celebrate whistleblowers in corporations. He does so at the behest of those corporations, who wish to manage the whistleblowers for their own advantage, to show that they are good corporate citizens and avoid bad publicity. It’s a little surprising that Hesketh is able to be so effective at his work, as he has Asperger’s Syndrome. As it applies to him, Asperger’s makes it difficult for him to understand how people will react emotionally to any given set of circumstances, because he does not experience most emotions as the bulk of humanity does.
But Hesketh is, in fact, good at his work, which has him traveling throughout the world. An assignment in Taiwan, at a timber factory, reveals a situation fully as strange as the child who killed her grandmother with a nail gun. Hesketh finds the whistleblower quickly, but the man behaves very oddly. It is plain that he loves the organization that employs him; his father, grandfather and uncles all worked there, and he believes it to be a good company. He also clearly finds whistleblowing to be shameful. Hesketh notes that his movements are “jerky and puppet-like,” and that he has a “hectic look.” It’s almost as if the man acted against his own conscience and his own will in doing as he did. But more mysteriously, the man points to evidence — genuine evidence, not something manufactured — that seems to indicate someone else, in fact, a child, was involved.
The mysteries compound from there, and Hesketh is right in the middle of them. All over the world, people are betraying corporations they love. All over the world, children are killing the adults who care for them. It seems that some sort of apocalypse is underway, but one never foreseen and with no discernible shape. Who or what is the uninvited? And what are they, or it, doing to the world? What is their purpose, their plan? And how do ordinary people figure it out, and what do they do about it?
The story is told entirely in the first person by Hesketh, which makes the narrative mostly seem cold, analytical, emotionless. Consequently, when Hesketh does show emotion, it is all the more powerful. He has an especially interesting voice; seeing through his eyes, watching his habits, his means of coping, is fascinating. His emotional distance makes him able to observe and relate what is happening around him as familiar institutions start to collapse. It’s a great use of character to make an unusual story even more unusual.
And the story is unusual, imaginative, excitingly different. I’ve read nothing like The Uninvited before. It is very different from the average horror or science fiction novel, imagining events that seem unimaginable in exquisite detail. Despite the veritable arms race among thriller writers to make their viewpoint characters in some way “other,” giving them a disease or disorder that sets them apart from the mass of humanity, Jensen’s novel is the most skillful use of such a technique I’ve seen. It is a bleak tale, telling of an end to the world that seems entirely meaningless, an end that humans are helpless to prevent at any level. Yet there is a beauty to it, too, and an odd note that perhaps what is happening is not an ending, but merely a change. This is not an easy novel, but it is eminently worthwhile.

Originally published at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/horrible-monday-the-uninvited-by-liz-je... ( )

Fans of Stephen King, James Patterson and Dean Kootz will enjoy Uninvited. I literally could not put this down, despite its meandering pace; I became completely caught up in the events that occurred within it's pages. Jensen delivers a thought provoking, creep-tastic novel that had me on the edge of my seat.

The story is delivered through the voice of Hesketh. He has Asperser’s Syndrome and while it makes interaction and understanding with people difficult, it proves to be an asset on the job. His company assists businesses in finding whistle-blowers who sabotage the company’s reputation. Then they help them re-invent themselves. Hesketh is the man they send because he is able to put the pieces together, vet out the problem and find viable solutions. He has just ending a relationship with a woman, and while he is comfortable with it ending, he misses his stepson Freddy K. A large number of whistle blowers are emerging globally, but even more alarming children are killing their loved ones and exhibiting some strange behavior. The tale that unfolds was fascinating, and eerily realistic. This tale had me turning the pages to discover answers.

Hesketh is not an easy character to understand. At times he can be a little abrasive. He is extremely intelligent and the way his mind works fascinated me. He has formed a bond with Freddy K and it felt very genuine. As Hesketh meets each of the other characters it has a profound effect on him and his thinking process. Freddy K and the other children intrigued me, as I attempted to understand what was happening. These children appear to have no knowledge of the heinous acts they commit, and their physical and emotional changes were freaky-tastic. The author made me believe and I love when the lines of reality blurr as I am reading. Other characters were interesting, unique and added to the intensity of the overall plot.

Jensen presents such a unique tale. It had elements of horror and science fiction. The tale begins on the cusp of a truly scary dystopian world and she takes us along for the ride. I like that she used the voice of Hesketh to deliver the tale. The fact that he has Asperger's Syndrome made his telling scientific, and I loved how his logical mind attempted to piece together what it could not understand. Jensen obviously did her research, and was able to show the compassion and feelings of the man as well. All of the characters, including the children were fleshed out and became very real to me. I could literally see these events unfolding. What occurred was chilling, mind-boggling and felt very realistic. Hesketh use of Venn diagrams held me captive as he slowly made connections. The why, was fascinating and clever and thought provoking. While the ending is not climatic it was extremely profound. I closed the book and thought, Wow, just Wow.

Fans of thought provoking, creepy dystopians will enjoy this tale. I also think fans of horror and science fiction will be drawn to this one as well. I simply loved this book and it left me completely satisfied on so many levels. I will definitely be reading more of this author's work.

I want to thank Bloomsbury USA for providing this ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.
Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer ( )

"Understated writing, unsolvable problems that had to finish their fated tracks, and a good sense of how to present events lightly."
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-uninvited-liz-jensen.html ( )

Hesketh, the main character in Liz Jensen’s newest novel, The Uninvited, is someone I don’t think I shall ever forget. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to get to know him through this book, and I can’t shake the feeling that he’s not just a literary character, but someone very real.

Hesketh has Asperger’s. He has a Ph.D. in anthropology, an affinity for learning and speaking foreign languages, a life-long love for linguistics, and a passion for origami. Everyday life frequently over-stimulates him and he resolves these situations by folding origami figures compulsively in his mind. For pleasure, he reads about the latest advances in particle physics. Hesketh is the ultimate reliable narrator; it is impossible for him to tell a lie. His ex-wife calls him a meat robot, but readers will learn that he has a deep reservoir of humanity that makes him a better human being than most of the best without Asperger’s. He has some odd social behavior that is not uncommon to those on the autism spectrum…behavior that at times can be extremely humorous. Hesketh is a gem of a human just waiting for the reader to discover.

If a fine author with very strong writing skills manages to deliver an extraordinary character study, then that would generally be enough to satisfy most literary readers. But what makes this book extraordinary is that this brilliant character study is enveloped in first-rate dystopian sci-fi thriller. I love dystopian fiction, but rarely get a chance to read it because it is hard for me to find authors that will hold my interest. This book grabbed me at the beginning, and didn’t let go until I’d quickly made my way to the end. For me, it was a high-octane literary and thinking-person’s thriller.

The main character is employed as a Behavioral Patterns Expert for an international corporation with a sudden growing worldwide client-base seeking help resolving devastating and singularly unexplainable cases of insider sabotage. Hesketh is the analyst sent to figure out what is going on...to examine the chaos of seemingly unrelated facts surrounding each case and somehow find the underlying patterns that connect the dots, in short, to find out why. Simultaneously, the worldwide media attention is focused on a slow but growing phenomenon of preadolescent children violently attacking and killing their parents and other adult family members. Hesketh eventually sees a link between the two types of incidents: corporate sabotage and child murderers. It is a problem so big it threatens the collapse of the whole of global civilization. It is a force that can’t be stopped. Hesketh’s job eventually morphs into a singular focus: nurturing and saving his ex-stepchild, Freddy K. Through Hesketh’s love and care for Freddy K., we begin to understand the depths of humanity that often remain hidden behind the outward social awkwardness of Asperger’s.

The Uninvited is a gem of a novel. Reading it makes me want to turn around and read all the author’s previous works…and I will. ( )