The Names of the Lost

by Liza Wieland

Set in the summer of 1980 at the height of the kidnapping and murders of black children in Atlanta, this highly charged, poetic novel tells the story of nine characters caught up in a public tragedy as well as in their own more private losses. The mysterious murders intensify the sense of isolation of the characters - black and white, children and adults - whose interwoven first-person narratives make up the novel. As the narrative voices grapple with the ghosts of the missing and murdered children and with their own inner demons, they try to impose some sense of order on the tragedies that touch their lives. The novel opens just after three teenage girls, swimming in the Chattahoochee River, discover the body of a black child. Each in soliloquy ponders this event along with her personal sorrows: Augusta (Gus) mourns the death of her first love, Billy Marsh, struck by lightning the year before; Noreen immerses herself in prayer and religious ritual to ease the pain of her father's desertion; and Robbie Lynn tries to comfort her six-year-old brother, Sam, as she grieves over the loss of their parents in a car wreck on the highway from Jonesboro. The first-person narration is a means to probe the truth about living in the world - the essential aloneness of it. Though the characters sympathize with each other's pain, solace for them comes from spinning out their stories. To tell one's story is to pretend that one has control over the events in it. That's why little Sam Wilkins keeps wanting Robbie Lynn to retell the story of their parents' death. He wants to get it right, to know his history so he can put it behind him and get on with the business of living. The Names of the Lost is about friendship, love, cruelty, fate, sadness, grief, and living through each of these. It is also a memorial of sorts to the murdered children.

312 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1992

Reviews

[April Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was such a hard book to finish reading. I didn't get the point to the book. There seemed to be no storyline or plot, just random writings about different characters. This was supposed to be about children disappearing, but I just didn't get it.

[Anne Biggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liza is, sorry no words, love her literary style, development, use of language. Not a page turner, you want to savor her little by little, then go back nd have another bit, and savor it again.