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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2017, 352 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2018, 352 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Norah Piehl
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From a beloved, award-winning writer, the much-anticipated novel about what happens when two families go on a tropical vacation - and the children go missing.
When Liv and Nora decide to take their families on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. The ship's comforts and possibilities seem infinite. The children - two eleven-year-olds, an eight-year-old, and a six-year-old—love the nonstop buffet and the independence they have at the Kids' Club. But when they all go ashore in beautiful Central America, a series of minor misfortunes leads the families farther and farther from the ship's safety. One minute the children are there, and the next they're gone.
What follows is a riveting, revealing story told from the perspectives of the adults and the children, as the once-happy parents - now turning on one another and blaming themselves - try to recover their children and their lives.
Celebrated for her ability to write vivid, spare, moving fiction, Maile Meloy shows how quickly the life we count on can fall away, and how a crisis changes everyone's priorities. The fast-paced, gripping plot of Do Not Become Alarmed carries with it an insightful, provocative examination of privilege, race, guilt, envy, the dilemmas of modern parenthood, and the challenge of living up to our own expectations.
Chapter 7
The kids were engrossed in a complicated game with the three inner tubes, making a kind of raft that they could stand on. It required a great deal of concentration. Hector was the master of the game, and he kept everyone involved. He didn't leave Sebastian and June out, or cut them any slack just because they were little. Penny admired that in him.
He tossed his wet hair off his face. If Hector had been in a band, Penny's friends would have fainted over him. And he could be in a band. He played guitar that well.
He was good at building a structure, too, like her father was. He gave directions, saying, "Hold there. Now, Penny, you sit there. Okay, now you can stand up there. Now Penny, too." He kept the whole three-ring raft stable. She loved hearing him say her name. His stomach was tan and slick above his pink-and-green checked shorts.
Every few minutes, someone would slip or step in the wrong place and everyone would go crashing into the water, screaming with ...
Meloy, who has written well-regarded books for both adults and young readers, divides her narrative into short chapters written from a variety of adult and child characters. Virtually every member of the three families has a chapter from his or her point of view, and several other supporting characters also have their voices heard over the course of the novel. In lesser hands, this technique could have felt like a writing exercise or parlor game, but Meloy adeptly utilizes this strategy to broaden the reader's perspective, build suspense, and weave a densely textured narrative that, in many ways, mirrors the chaos and confusion engulfing nearly every character at one point or another...continued
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(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth, State of Wonder, and Bel Canto
This is the book that every reader longs for: smart and thrilling and impossible to put down. Read it once at breakneck speed to find out what happens next, and then read it slowly to marvel at the perfect prose and the masterwork of a plot. It is an alarmingly good novel. Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones's Diary
Here is that perfect combination of a luminous writer and a big, page-turning story. This hugely suspenseful novel will speak to anyone who has ever felt responsible for keeping a loved one safe, whether it was a child, a partner, a parent, or a friend. Meloy's characters - the adults and the children - feel to me like real, living people I'll never forget.The disaster at the heart of Do Not Become Alarmed unfolds while the characters are on a shore excursion, but certainly some of the more notorious cruise ship disasters have taken place on the ships themselves. Some cruise ship voyages are truly tragic, such as the Costa Concordia ship that ran aground in the Mediterranean, killing thirty-two (and don't forget the Titanic!). Here are just a few other notable cruise ship catastrophes that may make you stick to dry land for your next vacation:
Norwegian Dawn: While en route to the Bahamas in 2005, this cruise ship was struck with a seven-story-high wave that broke windows, flooded more than sixty cabins, and injured several passengers.
Seabourn Spirits: In 2005, pirates off the coast of...
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