The Motion of Puppets by Keith Donohue is an adult fiction novel with just a little bit of magic coloring it’s pages. Newlyweds Kay and Theo are spending their summer in Québec; Theo working on his translations and Kay working as a background acrobat in the circus.
While walking the streets of Québec, Kay falls in love with an old puppet in an abandoned toy store. Almost every day she would stop and admire the puppet, wishing he was hers. While walking home from work one night Kay fears she is being followed and surprisingly, the lights are on in the toy store. Kay ducks in and her life is changed forever.
When Kay doesn’t come home, Theo looks for her everywhere and finally calls the police. With no clues and no suspects, Kay is truly missing without a trace. Theo begins to question their relationship and wonders if he ever truly knew his young wife. Regardless of his misgivings, Theo is unable to give Kay up and his search almost becomes obsession.
What happened to Kay? Will Theo be able to look past the ordinary and search for clues in unlikely places? Will there be an happily ever after for this separated couple?
I originally picked this one up because I’d read Donohue’s The Boy Who Drew Monsters and although it wasn’t one of my favorite reads, it was one that stayed with me for a long time.
The Motion of Puppets hit me in the same way as Donohue’s other novels. This book had a pretty slow start… and a pretty slow middle if I am being honest. This 250+ page book took me almost two weeks to read, which should tell you something. I was really intrigued by this world of puppets and was really looking forward to getting a peak behind the curtain. But until the end, I was sort of disappointed.
I felt the same way about Theo’s side of the story. His search for Kay, while heartfelt, was colored by his obsession with Muybridge. Yes, this probably has some deeper meaning/parallel to the life of a puppet, what with the focus on motion, but it just didn’t do much for me.
That being said the last 75 pages of this book was fantastic. Just like The Boy Who Drew Monsters the ending was a shock and extremely well done. The world of the puppets at the end was exactly what I wanted to see throughout the book. This dark, chaotic secret world was a feast for the mind.
Overall, this was a boring read with an interesting ending. This one gets a grudging three stars from me.
That’s all for now!
-M-