Fiction
February 2018
Eye of the Moon
by Ivan Obolensky
Built upon the fabric of the author’s background as a member of the 1%, yet woven from whole cloth, Eye of the Moon is an enchanting web of multigenerational intrigue, secret love affairs, sumptuous black- and white-tie dinner parties, potential murders, Egyptian occultism, vicious curses, unexpected magic, and secrets that break, or reshape, lives. It is peopled by characters like Russian dolls, with shocking elements revealed in layers over the five-day house party in Rhinebeck. Though the opening chapters are perhaps benign, readers and reviewers alike rave that they become ensnared in the story and can’t put the novel down, even if it means they burn their dinner or stay up to 4 am. Percy, the narrator, begins as someone raised on the fringes of the elite, quasi-abandoned by his traveling parents. He is abruptly reunited with his pseudo-brother and pulled into his hijinks. They stumble upon the dark story of Johnny's Aunt Alice, the legendary socialite who had died mysteriously twenty years earlier. Her letters and journals bring a more sinister world to the light and the two men dive headlong into the shadows. This inadvertently involves everyone at the estate, including the butler, Stanley, who was the only confidante of Alice with hidden knowledge of what happened behind closed doors before her death. She still lives in the places lit with magic, her narrative woven tightly with Percy’s. What will be the cost of revealing the truth? Where does Percy ultimately belong?
