Ani Katz's Haven is a chilling story about an apparent utopia that is anything but. As Caroline boards a ferry with husband Adam and infant son Gabriel for an exclusive getaway on a lovely island enclave, she is, first of all, relieved. After a trying period of his unemployment, Adam's job with corporate giant Corridor gives him the means to join an elite group of friends and coworkers in a spaceship (Caroline's description) of a house on the outskirts of Haven, a longtime home of the rich.
Caroline has never quite understood what it is that Corridor does, but she hopes to relax, get to know Adam's friends better, strengthen her bond with Gabriel, get back some artistic inspiration. Ever since becoming a mother, her photography has suffered. The island's wider inhabitants, however, strike her as being a little off. Tinkly laughter, choreographed dance, and uncanny children degrade into shadowy threats: angry islanders, old rituals, and corporate surveillance. Then comes the nightmarish morning when Caroline wakes up and Gabriel is gone. As she searches for her son and the truth of what happens in Haven, she will come to question even the rules, and the people, she thinks she knows best.
If Haven ever begins to feel like it might trend toward the formulaic, be assured that Katz (A Good Man) is about to twist her tricky narrative again. This masterpiece of psychological tension turns absolutely terrifying by its finish. Technology, hubris, deception, and mistrust combine in an unsettling corporate dystopia that asks what ends would justify which means. Riveting, thought-provoking, and ever surprising, Haven is not for the easily unnerved. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia