Amity Gaige’s Schroder is an exquisitely written novel
that takes the reader completely inside a confession to the main character’s
wife. From the beginning, you know that
the confessor, Erik Schroder, is a very unreliable narrator, so from that point
forward, you don’t know whether to believe anything he says.
The novel begins with Erik
as a young boy living in Boston, having recently immigrated into the country
from Germany with his father. On a whim,
he impulsively changes his name to Eric Kennedy on a summer camp application,
and from that point on, that alias is what he is known by (unbeknownst to his
father). He grows up, gets married to
Laura, and eventually they have a daughter, Meadow. The family is happy for awhile, but as often
happens nowadays, they grow apart. Eric
is not happy with his child’s custody arrangement and so decides to take
matters into his own hands by kidnapping her.
The reader believes that Meadow is perfectly safe in Eric’s hands, but Schroder gets more and more intense when
she discovers this may not be entirely true.
Gaige’s choice to use
Eric’s written confession to Laura as her storytelling method works incredibly
well. Schroder is very hard to put down, and even though Eric has been
lying his whole life, the reader sympathizes with him, even through the
abduction of his daughter. However, I
needed much more closure and confrontation at the end and wish that Gaige had satisfied
these wishes. I was left with more
questions than anything, and that’s not how I like my books to end. However, Gaige works wonders with words,
making Schroder a totally worthwhile
read.
MY RATING - 4
