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The Missing List

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A brave and beautiful memoir about one woman’s determined mission to expose family secrets and lies. 

When Clare Best agrees to help her dying father record the story of his life, she knows time is running out. Will he finally reveal the truth before he dies?

Written as a patchwork of flashbacks, journal entries, descriptions of old ciné-film footage and idiosyncratic lists, the narrative has the drive and intrigue of a thriller.

182 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 18, 2018

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Clare Best

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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
1 review
September 27, 2018
This is an exceptional book that took me on the most intense and emotional journey I have ever been through in a work of non fiction. It is beautifully written. The author's obvious love of the English language makes it such a pleasure to read - I reread numerous passages simply because they were so perfectly put together. The book is in a sort of collage style, which makes it impossible to put down. But most of all it is the courage and compassion shown in writing so cleanly and honestly about a subject as taboo as child abuse that makes this book exceptional. At times it so horrific that it is hard to read but at others it is uplifting and life affirming. An outstanding achievement, I couldn't recommend it highly enough.
Profile Image for Paul Valentine.
2 reviews1 follower
October 24, 2018

The Missing List – a memoir by Clare Best

I was drawn to The Missing List because of the subject matter – child sex abuse. I have read extensively in this genre (as it now must be viewed) and although there are exceptions, many of the books on the theme tend to be either ghost-written, written with a heavy editorial pen or, I’m afraid, not well written at all. Mostly they deal with the events, rarely with the impact.

The Missing List is both masterfully written, and it deals almost exclusively with the impact of abuse. It also has an enticing and powerful structure, dealing as it does with the decline and ultimate death of the abuser father in the present, superimposed on the rise of the abused child in memory. Furthermore, these memories are fed by the father’s hobby of cinematic photography, with Best’s short descriptive passages of film capturing the truth of those images as shot via her father’s eye. This sounds almost voyeuristic. It is anything but that. Indeed the very truth of these ciné images is set against the fudge of the abuser’s reasoning; “It must have been me…It was me. I thought it was normal, I thought it was what fathers do”. Interestingly, even this confession is presaged by the abuser blaming his wife for not stopping him. And what effect does this have on Best? This is probably the most dramatic and searing reality that anyone could face:

‘I watched the child I was from the first disk and cried. I cried for the lively little girl who always wants to hop and jump about without her clothes, constantly on the move, gesturing and communicating non-stop with herself and everyone around her. An extrovert playing to the camera. I’ve lost her. I’ve lost who I might have been. There’s a parallel life somewhere, a life she had that I didn’t. I’ve been cheated.

Later, in the second disk, there’s a quieter introverted child. The camera is on her less. She doesn’t deserve it, doesn’t want it. When she is framed, she sits apart from the others with her head in a book, turns away from the camera or covers her face with her hand.
Which film is true? Which child is me?’

What follows is a dissection of the relationship in order to win back the lost child, both as memory, and memory feeding the present dynamic of the father’s dying and Best’s own emergence.

One memory rests on a repeated recollection of lemon mousse with a cherry on top. The young Best, with practiced diligence, carefully submerges the cherry and eats away the mousse around it like a miner winning a valuable mineral, until all that is left is the prize – the solitary beautiful cherry. And just as she is about to win the prize, she is ‘conned’:

‘Each time…A ritual….he waits…until the prize is visible…and then he nudges you, points with his left hand to something high up…And as you look up, his right hand comes quickly…and scoops out the cherry…
I wonder now at the endless repetition. The normality of it. I wonder at the contract that must have existed between us: my hiding the cherry, his stealing it. My trust, his power. The need for me to be gullible. His need to take from me. My obligation to accept what he did.’

On one level, this describes a very simple analogy; a clear metaphor for his later actions.

A central part of the book for me, and one which is detailed with fearful honesty, is Best’s growing self-awareness which appears to be a direct result of her father’s increasing weakness, exemplified again by the awful paradox of her agreeing to write HIS memoir:


‘...So often in this process of his dying, I’m asking myself why I need to hammer out this part of the story, my part. Isn’t it all past, long past, and gone?
Secrets are secrets, isn’t that right? But untold, they swell and infiltrate everything. I feel completely filled up with secrets. I know that secrets must be let out. I know I’m the only one who can do this but each time I think about telling, I stall and stall, while fear and anxiety spread like blood in water. Sometimes I hear inside me the ghostly voice of the child he stole, the child I may never find, and I have to listen. I want her to talk until she has nothing left to say. I want to wake up one day and find the voice exhausted and then I’ll know the grandest, longest silence. And I’ll choose what to put into that silence...
I want to pull together the small child and the one who grew from what happened to her. They’re separate, I know that, and I want them to become one. I want this more than anything. I have to be able to remember before I can begin to forget.’
Such clarity. Such precision of thought. And considering the situation, what a startlingly accurate metaphor of anxiety spreading like ‘blood in water’. And while discussing the sharpness of the writing, there are passages in this book that George Eliot would have been proud of:


‘Some things don’t change. Like KitKat and Coca-Cola and the song of blackbirds, or the way you feel when the heat of the new spring sun warms your back. But it’s an illusion, a trick. The lettering on the wrapper and the red of the can have been subtly altered and so have the recipes. The blackbirds and the skin have died and been replaced.’



Another structural component is set by proclaiming the abusive father’s philosophies in short sections entitled THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MY FATHER. Interestingly it is one of these proclamations that gives the book its title, ’11. LISTS - A missing list must be found’.

And Best’s own listing of issues that have emanated from the abuse suffered at her own father’s hand appears precisely midway through the book preceding that very proclamation that a ‘missing list must be found’. Again, with remarkable insight and no little paradox, finding those elements of herself that have become her own ‘missing list’ proves to be the key to recovery, amplified in the wonderfully emotional balance of the Afterword (I for one am so glad that Best included it). This is shouting truth to power from the hilltop, and it is something that all survivors should do, and do with regularity.

This book should be read by all survivors, by mental health professionals and by anyone seeking to read the very best in life writing. Actually, everyone should read this book, from those in the last stages of schooling onwards, in order to observe the sheer damage done by sexual abuse, and the amazing courage of those who make it through (many don’t). Then at last we could capture that dreadful phrase, ‘just pull yourself together’, and consign it – like other fatherly world philosophies – to the black hole of history.

I eagerly await the next publication by this superlatively fine writer.



Paul Valentine
Profile Image for Carolyn.
39 reviews3 followers
October 7, 2018
A difficult but riveting memoir, told beautifully.
35 reviews
January 27, 2019


The Missing List is a memoir by Clare Best telling the story about her childhood and being sexually assaulted by someone who should only ever be protecting her, her father.
Clare has written her memoir bringing together her memories from years gone by along with her narrative of Ciné film clips and conversations with her father.

She writes in such a way that you find yourself drawn in and hoping for her father to say those words. My heart was in my mouth each time she spoke to him.

Writing this memoir must have had her reliving the horrors of her past.

It's difficult to review a book where you know the author has suffered such abuse. All I can say is that Clare's story is the story of so many people. Being brave putting hers into words will help so many.

Thank you Clare for your courage.
Profile Image for Madeleine Black.
Author 7 books87 followers
January 21, 2019
It's hard to put into words what I felt about Clare Best's memoir. It's a jumble of her thoughts and feelings looking back over her life and many parts resonated with me.

It was about secrets, numbness, memories, feelings, understanding and so many other things. She writes beautifully about all the different emotions and behaviours she experiences as a result of the sexual abuse she experienced by her father.

This book took a while for her to write, going back to it over years and I get a sense that the writing of it and the breaking of her silence is ultimately what saved her.

These stories need to be told and i'm grateful to the author, thank you
Profile Image for Patrick Ballin.
23 reviews3 followers
December 12, 2018
The words used by others about The Missing List chime for me too: brave; emotionally challenging; beautifully written (her poet's touch); compelling. This is a deep book, and not an easy book, but one that I wanted to keep reading and felt able to read in just a few days. It provoked serious reflection on my own childhood - thankfully free of the traumas described by Clare Best - and experience of being a sibling and a parent.
Profile Image for Naomi Foyle.
Author 14 books35 followers
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September 21, 2021
The Missing List is a compelling, lyrical, impeccably controlled account of overlapping journeys within the self - of fear and grief and healing, waves of emotion coursing through a life, conveyed in a highly original and subversive form that honours both the elusive and fragmentary nature of memory, and one particular woman's determination to reclaim her life from an abusive parent. It's a tremendous book, and while some readers may hesitate to confront the painful subject matter, I hope that many will take the plunge. Although there are heart wrenching moments, and scenes that made me incandescent with rage, Clare Best's compassion, insight and clarity are gifts to all who struggle with trauma of any kind.
108 reviews1 follower
February 9, 2025
A raw look at her relationship with her sexually abusive father as he is dying. I didn’t understand why she wanted him to bring it up. I also didn’t always see the relationship of the descriptions of the home movies to the text. One piece was written twice and I didn’t understand why. Her language is beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews

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