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Lauren Kelly is ... well, someone else. Lauren Kelly, as is stated on the review copy of TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU, is a pseudonym for a bestselling and award-winning author. I thought I knew at various points who it might be --- Joan Didion? Joyce Carol Oates? --- but those concerns were ultimately overridden by the story contained within and the craftsmanship with which it is told.
TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU bounces back and forth in time between 1993, the novel's present, and 1970 and 1971. The story concerns Lara Quade, a physically and emotionally damaged young woman who is an assistant at the Institute for Semiotics, Aesthetics, and Cultural Research at Princeton University. Lara's predictable life is dramatically disturbed when she receives a ticket to a chamber music concert from an anonymous benefactor and finds herself seated next to Zedrick Dewe, who himself is also the apparent beneficiary of a ticket from an unknown donor.
Quade, vaguely reminded by Dewe of her estranged brother, is unconsciously drawn to Dewe, going so far as to invite him back to her apartment --- a brazen act for her --- only to ultimately rebuff him. Dewe becomes violent in reaction to the rejection before finally leaving. Quade subsequently becomes aware that Dewe is stalking her and takes matters into her own hands. Quade, the pursued, becomes the pursuer. Her quest returns her to her childhood home and the past that left her physically scarred and emotionally empty. Quade discovers the reason for Dewe's obsession with her, and with it the certain knowledge that all and everything she knew about her past is wrong. The results, from the beginning to the end, are shocking.
The conclusion of TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU is haunting in its ambiguity. While the novel is complete in itself, there are questions --- one, in particular --- left unanswered, which might indicate that more novels concerning Quade and her family are in the offing. Quade is a disturbing protagonist who will remind you of at least a couple of people with whom you have a nodding acquaintance but not a friendship, I guarantee. Yet one is left at the conclusion of TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU with the desire to know her better, to learn what happens to her at the end of the book. The image that kept coming to me while reading this work, and stays with me even now, is that of the Munch painting "The Scream." You will hear it, and see it as well. Recommended.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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