A young girl has been murdered and the only witness is a child who cannot tell what he saw.
In the woods of a small town, Adam, a nine-year-old autistic boy, is discovered hiding near to the body of his classmate. They both wandered off from the school playground several hours earlier, and now the police are relying on Adam as the only witness to an appalling crime. But he can't tell the police what he saw—or what he heard. Barely verbal on the best of days, Adam has retreated into a silent world that Cara, his mother, knows only too well.
With her community in shock and her son unable to help with the police investigation, Cara tries to decode the puzzling events. Adam has never broken the rules before, so why did he disappear with the little girl during recess? As a single mother, Cara has devoted her life to opening paths of communication between her son and the outside world. Now, she must interpret the changes in Adam's behavior not only to help him through the trauma, but to help the police catch a killer. Cammie McGovern brings her own experience as the mother of an autistic child to articulate the struggles—and the victories—that consume the lives of parents raising children with special needs. A powerful story of the tangled emotional bond between mother and son, and a thrilling novel of psychological suspense, Eye Contact won't let you go. Lovers of Mystic River will be captivated by this fresh and fascinating journey into the world of a child in crisis and a mother who longs to bring him through unscathed.
Eye Contact has a wide cast of characters (one reviewer felt a few too many) but they are all well-drawn and, on the whole, ring true. The most richly imagined are Cara, Adam's mother, and Morgan, a troubled 13-year-old boy who's determined to solve the crime as a way to atone for his own perceived guilt. McGovern wraps all these richly drawn characters, and a host of astute insights, around a gripping mystery which twists and turns down a good few dead ends before arriving at its unexpected conclusion. (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Publishers Weekly
Meticulously researched and emotionally absorbing.
Booklist
Tightly woven and gripping, this literary mystery takes several unexpected twists and turns as it builds to the resolution.
Library Journal
This page-turner is a rewarding look into the life of a mother who must discover the truth, even if it ends up hurting her-and her son-in the process.
Kirkus Reviews
Despite some flaws, a generally successful combination of compassionate domestic realism and pulse-rattling suspense.
Michael Paterniti, author of Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain
Once in a blue moon comes a literary thriller so full of our everyday lives that it rocks you back on your heels. This is it! This book. These sweet, funny, heartbreaking characters--these mothers and sons, broken friends and lovers--including one unforgettable little boy whose last gesture in those deadly, mysterious woods recalls our lost innocence. Eye Contact is a thrilling mystery tautly told, and beautifully realized. In it, Cammie McGovern leads us through the shadowlands of our own hometowns where words break down and paranoias proliferate, even as we yearn for one lost moment of fluency. This is a book of secrets that will change you.
Patricia Stacey, author of The Boy Who Loved Windows
n the tradition of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Cammie McGovern delivers a compelling murder mystery that intrigues as much by what it hides as by what it so deftly reveals--the stark, poignant, deeply intimate moments in the lives of people living with autism and those who love them.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Me Eye contact Eye Contact was a very good book. It was very thrilling at the start but more towards the end it started to become a little slow. It was a book you need to read twice to understand the ending. It switches a lot in your mind on who killed the little... Read More
Rated of 5
by Marie Too much bad language :( I enjoyed the first half of this book. It was a page turner. However as I got further into it I started seeing the F-word here and there. The book took on a darker theme. By the end I wanted to find out the answer to the mystery but I didn't want... Read More
Rated of 5
by smokey Eye Contact I loved this book. I couldn't put it down. It was very interesting and suspenseful. It had a lot of details. READ THIS
Like Cara, Cammie McGovern is the mother of an autistic boy; she says that
about four years ago she started writing a nonfiction account of the time just
before and after her son's diagnosis. However, she eventually put the
memoir aside to return to fiction because she says, "I knew how to create a
story and keep it moving along with suspense and surprises better than I knew
how to report the countless ways that those years were hard and lonely for our
family." She's glad that she returned to the familiar medium of fiction
(she's the author of one previous novel, The Art of Seeing, 2002 and many
short stories) because she says there are so many wonderful memoirs written by
parents already - two of her favorites are Beth Kephardt's The Slant of Sun
and Pat Stacey's
The Boy Who Loved Windows.
Her stories have always been plot-driven but this is her first venture into the
murder-mystery genre, she says that she likes the format because it puts every
character on a precipice, raising the stakes and launching a story...
Jason Stafford is a former Wall Street hotshot who made some bad moves, paid the price with two years in prison, and is now trying to put his life back together. He's unemployable, until an investment firm asks him to look into possible problems left by a junior trader who died recently in an accident. What he discovers is big - there are...
The former residents of The Hawthorne House School for the Treatment of Autistic Children attend the first-ever reunion 15 years after the school closes, but events turn into a bloody nightmare when the school's founder is found tortured to death in the basement.
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Michael Paterniti, author of Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain
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