Gone

by Elisabeth Sheffield

Elisabeth Sheffield's novel Gone juxtaposes the manic, run-on confession of Stella Vanderzee, California freeway flyer, with a series of cryptic letters from her Aunt Juju. This interwoven, doubling narrative recounts how Stella returns home to seek an inheritance she considers her own. However, her search is confounded by a secret history, a strange tale of closeted sexuality and suppressed desire, revealing a family saga overwritten by half-truth and innuendo. Gone is an attempt to give form to what has been lost - the pastoral past, the feminine body - even as that attempt is inevitably the undoing of what it retrieves.

258 pages, Paperback

First published January 21, 2003

Reviews

[Victoria]

Hmmm... a very different sort of book - the kind that probably gets better with a second or third read, but not the kind that you rush back into over and over again. A lot of it was pretty boring, I must admit. And though it was certainly interesting - with a very different structure, it wasn't particularly enjoyable. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone really and it will probably be quite some time before I do re-read it - if at all!

[Cris Mazza]

A writer who has a stone cold lock on what interior monologue is all about. Intense, funny, scary, affecting.

[Ted]

It's tough to do endings, and this is one of the best. I won't say any more...