Instead of info-dumping, the main character, Jessie, has recollections rather unconvincingly sparked off by events and objects. We learn that she was born in Cambridgeshire, moving to Hawick Scotland after her first marriage (to Brendan) ended (13 years before the time of the book). She lives in a house where she believes her great-great-grandmother used to live. In Wawick she married Will, who left without warning one morning. She's a translator, 49, with a son Paul (about 30). In chapter 1 she's at a conference. Chapter 2 flashes back to 1985, when she was 18 and on holiday with her older sister Gail, Gail's husband Gary and their daughter Eleanor. Then there are a few lines on a page, including "I found myself waking up feeling homesick and thinking of Jessie, and I decided I would send her a message; I would tell her: I'm on my way home". Little messages in this vein appear between other chapters too.
There are early hints that Eleanor is missing and Jessie is implicated. Or does the title refer to Will, who's not been in touch since he left months before? Or Paul?
On p.70 there are interesting plots of stories she's translating, including ghost stories. She wonders whether her house is haunted. She's reading a biography of DH Lawrence - "Lawrence was now abroad with no desire ever to go home again, while Frieda struggled to gain access to the children she had abandoned" (p.76). Another theme emerges of codes, misunderstandings and communication - her translation work, Frieda being accused of messaging to Germans; Jessie leaving messages in library books, etc. She's deaf in one ear. Why?
She's apparently been showing too much interest in the 17 y.o. boy next door, her unawareness of this perhaps a sign of her mental state.
She meets Robert, a near stranger, in her local, tells him about some ghost poems, goes home to find that her old mug's been broken. Next time they eat together she sleeps with him. On p.140, about 80% through the book, the two of them are in the local. Stewart's there. Jessie tells Robert that when Will was driving a train he hit Stewart's son, who was still in a coma. Will couldn't cope with work after. Um ... it's a bit late to tell us about that.
The inter-chapter notes to us become postcards to her. She recognises Will's handwriting. It's nearly Xmas. She stays a night with her sister. Gary's never forgiven her. She discovers that she's pregnant. She texts Robert about it. When she sees him on the street he says "Your house is just a house ... There is no ghost" (p.170). She considers having an abortion. In the final chapter, Will arrives at the empty house. There are hints that Jessie's caught a train, or plans to catch one soon. The final sentence is "The house is quiet, apart from the sound of it trying to settle" (p.170).
Everything (a jigsaw, a cup) is an aide-memoire, setting off a cascade of memories or analogies. Mood is generated by those unrelated snippets and flights of fancy -
- Eleanor's favourite story was a picture book about Frogmen: amphibious creatures that lived in the vast, deep sea but sometimes surfaced ... And these Frogmen lived alone, and they were lonely, but in the end, in the final pages of the picture book, they began to find one another, and to make friends, and to fall in love ... The book fell through the railings and into the sea ... 'Perhaps a Frogman will find it,' said Jessie (p.18)
- a little girl was toing and froing beneath a street lamp, running into and out of the wash of orange light. With an outstretched hand, the child seemed to be trying to touch the lamplight and then - as if to see if it felt any different - the darkness (p.25)
- She had, of course, more than one great-great-grandmother: she had eight of them, a good number for a dinner party, she thought. She imagined having them all over, all the great-great-grandmothers, and cooking a huge lasagne for them. Mentally, she sat them down around her dining table - it would necessitate putting the extra leaf in the table to make it long enough, and she would have to bring in the piano stool and a couple of folding chairs (p.28)
- She had read a book about scientists recording the faint sound of two black holes colliding more than a billion years ago, the collision causing waves that could still be detected now. People were always finding things that you had not realised anyone was looking for. She would not even have known where to start (p.31)
- For Jessie, in childhood, the real treats had been in tins: alphabet soup or spaghetti hoops, which were like alphabet pasta but just the Os, the language of ghosts (p.69)
She's good at significant detail though the symbolism can be pushed too far - e.g. on p.51 there's "Her eyes strayed from her book to a crack at the top of the wall ... disappeared under the doorframe, heading out into the hallway. Or perhaps it had started out there and was coming in ... When she switched off the light, she could not see the crack, but of course it was still there". On p.132 there's "She ought to have run, like a greyhound let out of its box. She always felt so sorry for those skinny greyhounds, so thin they might just snap, pelting after a hare that they could never ever catch".
Since 2012 Alison Moore has published 4 novels for adults and a book of short stories. She's not been ignored (2 of the novels were Observer Books of the Year) but should she be more highly regarded than she is? She says that she "naturally seem[s] to write short novels, all under 50,000 words" which perhaps doesn't help. And she's still with her first publisher.
Other reviews
- Anna Aslanyan (The main narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to 1985 and with anonymous messages, in which someone tells Jessie they are coming home. The interruptions grow longer; the tension increases. And then, without breaking the rhythm, Moore swiftly brings the story to an end, reminding you that life can be a realist drama and a romance, a horror story and an existential novel – often all of these things at once, and more.)
- Nina Allen
- Hamish Robertson (In The Lighthouse, the reader is drip-fed information about two very different lives, both charged with unhappiness, that intersect explosively in a hotel in Germany. So compelling is the build-up, that the climax is silent — as if the explosion had beaten the reader to the punch. The same highly engineered, drip-feed technique is applied in Missing, but the crisis never comes. What does come is more drift-like, rhythmical and mysterious: change.)
- Cath Barton (Reading Missing for the second time I found it multi-layered, full of reflection on the nature of our experience, and yet written with such immediacy and freshness that the pages fly past. There is tragedy at its core, and yet the characters carry on, as people do.)
- bunchmunch
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