Caroline Kepnes

A Review of Caroline Kepnes’ “Providence”

Beauty and the Beast

Zachary Houle
Sep 9, 2018 · 5 min read
“Providence” Book Cover

If I’ve been away for a long time, part of the reason is this book. Providence is not an easy read, and that’s due to the subject matter. It’s a love story, but it is a very ugly love story. Seeing as though I’m just putting myself out there in the dating scene again, it is probably the kind of book that I wanted to skip over and move on from. That’s not to say that the book is terrible or poorly written. It isn’t. There’s a fair bit to admire in the telling of this tale — the way it feels literary with its multiple narrative viewpoints, but yet feels pulpy in a horror novel way. However, if you’re looking for an uplifting tale, your best bet would be to probably look elsewhere.

Providence is the story of a boy named Jon Bronson, who has a crush on a neighbour and classmate named Chloe. One day, he is kidnapped and put into an induced coma by his capture. Four years later, he re-emerges, but is a changed person. He now has a superpower — he can cause people to go into cardiac arrest at will. Thus, upon discovering this with his friends and family, he secretly goes into hiding so that he cannot hurt the ones he loves. Chloe, meanwhile, holds a bit of a torch for Jon, becoming a celebrated painter who paints images of him. However, she, too, after a while moves on and is set to marry the nemesis of Jon — a boy who bullied Jon while growing up. At the same time, a homicide detective nicknamed “Eggs” is twigging into the fact that a whole bunch of young people dying with no history of heart failure isn’t just a coincidence, and gets closer and closer to nabbing Jon as Jon carries out his deadly business, which, it should be noted, he can’t help.

Providence is probably a bunch of things, but, to me, this is a story about family and what binds them together, and how they may lose each other. Jon, of course, secretly still pines for Chloe, but can’t bear to be near her for the fear of hurting her. In that sense, I suppose this novel kind is a riff on the notion of how people can hurt other human beings with their emotions. It is also a bit of a beauty and the beast horror story: Jon is given a copy of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwhich Horror as a parting gift from his captor, so I suppose you could say that this book is one big power chord about the impact of other books, whether they are celebrated or not. (This is my first time being acquainted with The Dunwhich Horror, so my impressions of it are that it might be a lesser work in Lovecraft’s oeuvre.)

Despite this, and the fact that the book is well written, I had a hard time handling it. The notion of being separated from someone you immensely care about — and having the reason for it being not your fault — is a bit tough to encounter. And, so, I read it slowly, only approaching it when I felt like I was really ready for it. I literally went weeks before opening my Kindle to the slow burning sense of disgust that this book wants to make you feel. So, yes, a tough read indeed. Would I recommend it? It’s hard to say. I enjoyed the book when I felt comfortable enough to read it, and it works as a piece of well-versed entertainment. However, if you want a feel good romance about the state of human emotion, well … maybe not so much.

What does hold the book together is the narrative bits featuring Eggs as the protagonist. He’s something of the moral glue for the characters as he slowly starts zeroing in on what may be really happening to them. He’s not perfect — he has a son presumably with autism who is dead to him — but you do want to see Jon get captured if only so he’s not a danger to himself, lest of all others. Consequently, the Jon chapters are a little tough. Yes, he does manage to kill some particularly nasty people, but he also inadvertently kills some nice people too.

If there’s a major flaw with this work, it is that we don’t get a sense of the justification for why Jon has been made this way by his captor. Why would someone want to give someone else the power to kill people indiscreetly? Providence never really answers this question. Thus, there is a bit of a dark hole in the narrative of this novel. Why pick Jon? It is because he’s young and in touch with his feelings? Is it something more? We never know. And then there is the whole question of how this kind of telepathy really works, and why the captor seeks this power out. (Let alone why he wouldn’t want to be granted the power of giving people heart attacks to himself.) There are a lot of questions that aren’t really answered in this work, and that’s kind of problematic. I suppose that Providence is meant to be an easy-going good read, a piece of horror fiction, but there’s something vacant about it.

Thus, my feelings for this book are rather mixed. Are we supposed to enjoy the fact that Jon has the ability to take out people of all walks of life? Or are we supposed to empathize with Eggs’ quest to get to the bottom of things and put the cuffs around Jon? I don’t know. I certainly wouldn’t want to question a novel’s morals — after all, this is probably just meant as a thriller. However, there were elements that troubled me. And saddened me. I felt sorry for Jon and Chloe and wished that true love could find them in the end. Whether or not they get that is up to the reader to decide. Anyhow, I apologize again if I was a little pokey with this one, but you can say that Providence conjures certain feelings. Whether or not you want to feel the yearning that this novel mines so acutely is another question altogether.

Caroline Kepnes’ Providence was published by Random House on June 19, 2018.

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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com

Zachary Houle

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Book critic, Fiction author, Poet, Writer, Editor. Follow me on Twitter @zachary_houle.

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