Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Ophelia, a professor of Dante, is stricken when she discovers that her husband Andy has been cheating on her with a winsome colleague. What follows is Ophelia’s figurative descent into hell as she obsessively tracks her subjects, performs surveillance in her beat-up Volvo, and moves into the property next door to Amber’ s, which has gone into foreclosure. She spies on the lovers, growing more and more estranged from reality. Andy’s betrayal reawakens the earlier trauma of abandonment by her mother at the age of eight. When Andy and Amber become engaged, Ophelia snaps. The story is a jailhouse confessional, a dark comedy, an oeuvre of women’s rage, a suspenseful revenge fantasy, and a moving portrait of one woman’s psychological breakdown.
A broken marriage and a gruesome murder are the opening set for a deep psychological dive in The Vixen Amber Halloway by Carol LaHines.
Ophelia and her husband, Andy, are happily married, or so Ophelia thinks. They have the perfect life, a huge step up for Ophelia after a rocky childhood. But her world quickly comes crashing down around her after Andy fills for divorce. Worse still, Ophelia has discovered Andy’s infidelity with his coworker, Amber Halloway.
Consumed with anger and disgust, Ophelia descends deeper into madness, watching Andy and Amber together, sneaking into their home, and stalking them both obsessively. After months and months of watching Andy and Amber’s relationship blossoming, Ophelia snaps, and what follows is something no one will ever forget.
The Vixen Amber Halloway has a very unique voice. Going from Ophelia’s relationship with Andy in its early days to her broken childhood, then into her spiral to madness, this book covers the gambit. Reading as a diary written by Ophelia herself, it does provide a window into her mind. It is a psychological piece more than a mystery. I appreciated the unusual storytelling and did find it to be a work that would appeal to anyone who enjoys insight into the mind.
However, I struggled at times as I found this book could easily become repetitive. Not only with the story, for example, her mother leaving her as a child, but also with the language. You can only read “vis” so often before it becomes too much.
Just as Dante leads you through the spiral into the nine circles of hell, The Vixen Amber Halloway is a psychological, mind-bending crime thriller that descends into madness.
Carol LaHines’ debut novel, Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award. Her fiction has appeared in literary journals including Fence, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, The Literary Review, The Laurel Review, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The South Carolina Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Sycamore Review, Permafrost, redivider, Literary Orphans, and Literal Latte.
