Jonah
This is no fairy tale… Schulman has written a creepy page-turner.
- The New York Times Book Review
Feverishly imagined tropical purgatory
- Boston Globe
Schulman’s spare prose drives this suspenseful and moving novel with the enigmatic precision of poetry, fulfilling the promise she demonstrated in her debut, THE CAGE.
- Publishers Weekly, starred review
This odd but engrossing novel cuts deep and exactly to the point.
- Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio
A story fraught with unexpected tensions and physical danger… Flawlessly structured and thematically complex… The novel’s multiple thematic symmetries build in richly complex ways, intensified by prose that is both lyrical and staccato-tough. Marvelously suggestive and unsettling… An exhilarating and moving story.
- Boston Book Review
Nightmares have their own logic.
- The Toronto Star
This story develops believably, however disastrously, and Schulman describes Jane’s dysfunctioal parents, her classmates, the Queen’s professors, and the tense life on the small Indonesian island excellently.
- Booklist
A thrilling read that illuminates a profound human transition.
- Globe and Mail
Startling in its surreal intensity, and exquisitely written.
- Baltimore Sun
A cloistered pressure cooker… Odds are you have never set foot in a place remotely like Queen’s Medical School.
- Boston Phoenix
Plot Description
On a sweltering August morning, Jane Guy steps from an island plane into a strange and dangerous world. The awkward, insecure child of a world-renowned physician, she has come to attend Queen’s Medical School on a tiny Indonesian island.
For an exorbitant enrollment fee, Queen’s is willing to accept any American child of privilege who has been rejected by all normal medical schools. Not bound by American law, the school specializes in motivating problem students –no matter what the cost to each student. For Jane, given the transgressions of her past, Queen’s is her last chance.
Surrounded by jungle and sea, Jane is plunged into unrelenting heat and the psychological abuse of the teaching staff. The truest connection she makes on the island is with another student, Keefer. Together they spend their few spare minutes watching as Jonah –a shark that Keefer keeps captive in an ocean pen– slowly circles his cage.
As days extend into weeks, Jane feels herself changing, retreating deeper into a body and spirit she no longer recognizes. And as an aura of desperation deepens among her peers, Jane’s determination to succeed grows. Failure is the only way off the island, and for Jane, it is not an option.