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Book Summary and Reviews of In This Way I Was Saved by Brian DeLeeuw

In This Way I Was Saved by Brian DeLeeuw

In This Way I Was Saved

by Brian DeLeeuw

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • Aug 2009, 304 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

On a chilly November afternoon, six-year-old Luke Nightingale's life changes forever. On the playground across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he encounters Daniel. Soon the boys are hiding from dinosaurs and shooting sniper rifles. Within hours, Luke and his mother, Claire, are welcoming Daniel into their Upper East Side apartment - and their lives.

Daniel and Luke are soon inseparable. With his parents divorcing, Luke takes comfort in having a near-constant playmate. But there's something strange about Daniel, who is more than happy to bind himself to the Nightingales. The divorce has cut Luke's father out of the picture, and as his increasingly fragile mother struggles with the insidious family depression, Daniel - shrewd, adventurous, and insightful - provides Luke both recreation and refuge.

As Luke grows from a child to an adolescent to a young man, he realizes that as much as his mother needs him, Daniel needs him more. Jealous of Luke's other attachments, Daniel moves from gestures of friendship into increasingly sinister manipulations. In the end, Luke finds himself in a daily battle for control of his own life - wondering whether he or Daniel will emerge victorious.

Brian DeLeeuw's debut is a haunting and provocative story of a family's love and madness that you will not be able to put down.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"[A] neat bundling of the classic story of a spirit possessing an innocent with the Jungian shadow self, but in the end readers will be somewhat disappointed that he neglects to answer some of the more intriguing questions." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. DeLeeuw's debut novel is a riveting exploration of the dark side of self." - Library Journal

"Once readers 'get it,' the narrative conceit becomes less interesting—but Hitchcock would have loved the premise." - Kirkus Reviews

"In this original, inventive debut, Brian DeLeeuw delivers a suspenseful and surprisingly tender psychological thriller that gives physical shape to the torment of isolation." - Helen Schulman, author of A Day At The Beach

This information about In This Way I Was Saved was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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