An ancient family curse roars back to life in Sara Sligar's superbly dark second novel, Vantage Point. It features siblings from an old-money Maine dynasty that has withstood terrible misfortunes and the modern-day calamity threatening to capsize them once and for all. Sligar's brilliantly crafted thriller delivers a hefty dose of horror-tinged suspense while expertly navigating contemporary themes such as online violations of privacy and the head-spinning speed with which artificial intelligence can manipulate people's lives.
Orphaned years earlier in their teens, Teddy and Clara are heirs to the famed Wieland fortune. Teddy is the steady older brother who has rescued Clara from self-destruction too many times to count. He often confuses his commanding authority over his family with love; she maintains an illusion of control through binge and purge sessions that have compromised her health. Clara's heart-wrenching struggle with disordered eating is portrayed with compassionate, devastating realism. Set on Vantage Point, the majestic cliffside island estate the siblings inherited from their parents, the story opens in the present day with Teddy launching his Senate campaign. He is blessed with dashing good looks and contentedly married to Clara's childhood best friend, Jess, a woman troubled by her own past.
Vantage Point is narrated by Clara and Jess in alternating chapters, a prism through which their interlocking stories collide and flow. Unlike Clara, Teddy and Jess don't believe in the long-dormant family curse, a long run of freakish fatal accidents starting in 1902 and occurring in the month of April. Sligar (Take Me Apart) documents these incidents in entertaining Wikipedia entries scattered throughout the book.
Back in the present day, the calendar marches into spring and the Internet blows up with compromising videos of Clara. Teddy's scandal-free political campaign is suddenly in disarray as more salacious recordings surface. Whether or not the videos are real or "deepfakes," the damage is done. Meanwhile, Clara is haunted by bizarre visions that seem horrifyingly real. Is her illness interfering with her mind, or is there something more nefarious at play? And if it's the dreaded curse, which family member is it after?
Sligar's fiendishly clever plot portends a terrifying future where, thanks to technology, reality is whatever we choose to make it. In a literary parable for our unsettling times, Vantage Point delivers an immersive, urgent drama reminding readers that sometimes it's the ones who seem the most broken that are the strongest. --Shahina Piyarali
Shelf Talker: Set on a cliffside Maine estate, this superbly suspenseful novel features a wealthy but cursed family haunted by eating disorders, an Internet scandal, and bizarre visions that portend a terrifying future.