But Gray takes these somewhat soiled and contrived narrative elements and shapes them into a plangent suspense thriller that's at once archetypal and subtly subversive.

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It is not the keening and caterwauling I mind so much as the eerily human nature of the plangent cries, which can sound like anything from a baby crying to a couple of nightclub bouncers fighting in an alley.

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His testimony about how this happened in his own life is plangent and familiar, but he addles it a bit by insisting that the real damage is being done at the neurological level, that our children are having their brains altered by too much instant messaging and the like.

NEWYORKER: The Information