finished reading Surface Tension

When I had posted about it, I was only about halfway through, and the end really surprised me. My intuition on each and every character was completely off!!!
At the end the suspense was nearly unbearable because you know there's a deep dark secret to be revealed, you also know that it's probably worse than you've imagined, but you just can't guess it. Or maybe I couldn't, my mind isn't twisted enough :p
In a sense it's a lot like the other book I read recently, Beautiful Lies, which probably explains why there was a special offer if I bought both at the same time. At first I thought it would be a book about cults, and although it IS an underlying theme, it's not the most important one. A bit like in Murakami's Kyoko, the friend she wants to help is gay, dying of AIDS and doesn't remember her, but the main theme of the book isn't homosexuality, or AIDS, but rather love and salsa.

So the questions this book raises are:
under what circumstances, and to whom, must the truth, as unbearable to hear as it may be, be told?
the question of child custody
secrets, especially of women who are beaten by their husbands
the truth and how it can be twisted
who to trust?

and many more, but sort of hard to formulate without revealing the entire plot.



books