This novel is excruciatingly tight in its focused claustrophobic effects. The narrative focuses on the predicament of a single individual, with telling details of her experience, from the wild hope inspired by a bottle of cream within reach, to the ecstasy of being able to get a drink of cold water—all without bringing her handcuffed hand to her mouth. Few novels, even those devoted to an interior monologue, get within the skin of a character as well as King's depiction of Jessie's captivity.

The only sense of movement or action, except for Jessie's escape, occurs as Jessie remembers the events of her life: childhood summers, college, marriage, an eclipse, and her molestation: a curiously static plot technique. But the weaving together of memory and circumstance, of action in the past and reaction in the present reinforce the full complexity of the text. King represents this textually...