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Songs for the Missing
A heartfelt family drama of loss and reconciliation with the unthinkable, from the author of Emily, Alone and Henry, HimselfReturning again to the theme of working-class people and their wrenching concerns, Songs for the Missing begins with the suspenseful pace of a thriller, following an Ohio community's efforts to locate a young woman who has gone missing. It soon deepens into an affecting portrait of a family trying desperately to hold onto itself and the memory of a daughter whose return becomes increasingly unlikely. Stark and honest, this is an intimate account of what happens behind the headlines of a very American tragedy.
316 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
71 people are currently reading
2788 people want to read
About the author
Stewart O'Nan
70 books1,364 followersStewart O'Nan is the author of eighteen novels, including Emily, Alone; Last Night at the Lobster; A Prayer for the Dying; Snow Angels; and the forthcoming Ocean State, due out from Grove/Atlantic on March 8th, 2022.
With Stephen King, I’ve also co-written Faithful, a nonfiction account of the 2004 Boston Red Sox, and the e-story “A Face in the Crowd.”
You can catch me at stewart-onan.com, on Twitter @stewartonan and on Facebook @stewartONanAuthor
With Stephen King, I’ve also co-written Faithful, a nonfiction account of the 2004 Boston Red Sox, and the e-story “A Face in the Crowd.”
You can catch me at stewart-onan.com, on Twitter @stewartonan and on Facebook @stewartONanAuthor
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 778 reviews
April 19, 2019
Kim Larson, from
a small town, Kingsville, Ohio, is about to start college in a couple of months. She’s 18 years old.
Police told the parents, Fran and Ed, that if they found her (Kim had gone missing)...that if she didn’t want to disclose any information, not come home, not tell her family her whereabouts- it was her adult legal right.
It wasn’t even in the realm of possibilities— The parents knew their daughter. She did not take off. When the police asked Fran, “what do you think happened to Kim?”...
Fran says, “I think someone took her”.
Lindsay, 15 years old - had her drivers permit. Kim took her sister out driving. They stopped at Dairy Queen for a hamburger & fries.... Kim’s treat. She had just told her younger sister she would miss her when she was away at college. She said Lindsay could come visit - stay a weekend.
That was the last time Lindsay saw her sister.
Kim worked part time in a gas station. It was the last summer home with her High School friends. Kim played hard with her friends and boyfriend.
The kids spent time at the lake during the day - the beach at night. They drank a little beer - smoked a little pot- basically all good kids!!
Everything was so normal - until it wasn’t.
Fears, fliers, fundraisers... continue to develop.
The family and friends wait -hope- search - grieve, and are changed forever.
Weeks, and months go by - but no Kim.
Kim’s friends left for college. ..
Holidays rolled around.
Kids came back home for Thanksgiving, and Christmas break. Then summer break.
Lindsay went off to camp.
She too, was beginning to think about college. She had great grades and was leaning towards Northwestern.
This story of loss, grief, family, community, memories, and love was gut real.
The worse tragedy happened for a family and they each reacted & responded to the trauma differently.
Fran for example was ok when doing basic errands- shopping and such, but every time she saw a teenage girl going about her normal life, she hurt deeper inside.
Ed... went about his day - worked in real estate- stayed busy - but he knew he’d never he the same.
Lindsay becomes the center of love, hope, and life moving forward....
but the pain of missing her sister never left her.
Kim’s best friends moved on. One of Kim’s friends, Elise hooked up with Kim’s old boyfriend, J.P.
Fran and Ed lost weight -
A year later - there was an anniversary service...
The police did their work...even closing in on their investigation....but never really any clear-cut resolutions.
I thought about how Ed, Fran,and Lindsay might never be able to reconcile Kim’s death. They might struggle every day - but they may also experience happiness. I was hoping they would have some peaceful - joyful days ahead.
A very real - sad - and compassionate story-
Not a twisty mystery thriller - rather a lonely, desolate journey into the lives who suffered most.
The writing was absolutely beautiful. It was my first book by Stewart O’Nan.
( thank you Bruce)...
It won’t be my last.
a small town, Kingsville, Ohio, is about to start college in a couple of months. She’s 18 years old.
Police told the parents, Fran and Ed, that if they found her (Kim had gone missing)...that if she didn’t want to disclose any information, not come home, not tell her family her whereabouts- it was her adult legal right.
It wasn’t even in the realm of possibilities— The parents knew their daughter. She did not take off. When the police asked Fran, “what do you think happened to Kim?”...
Fran says, “I think someone took her”.
Lindsay, 15 years old - had her drivers permit. Kim took her sister out driving. They stopped at Dairy Queen for a hamburger & fries.... Kim’s treat. She had just told her younger sister she would miss her when she was away at college. She said Lindsay could come visit - stay a weekend.
That was the last time Lindsay saw her sister.
Kim worked part time in a gas station. It was the last summer home with her High School friends. Kim played hard with her friends and boyfriend.
The kids spent time at the lake during the day - the beach at night. They drank a little beer - smoked a little pot- basically all good kids!!
Everything was so normal - until it wasn’t.
Fears, fliers, fundraisers... continue to develop.
The family and friends wait -hope- search - grieve, and are changed forever.
Weeks, and months go by - but no Kim.
Kim’s friends left for college. ..
Holidays rolled around.
Kids came back home for Thanksgiving, and Christmas break. Then summer break.
Lindsay went off to camp.
She too, was beginning to think about college. She had great grades and was leaning towards Northwestern.
This story of loss, grief, family, community, memories, and love was gut real.
The worse tragedy happened for a family and they each reacted & responded to the trauma differently.
Fran for example was ok when doing basic errands- shopping and such, but every time she saw a teenage girl going about her normal life, she hurt deeper inside.
Ed... went about his day - worked in real estate- stayed busy - but he knew he’d never he the same.
Lindsay becomes the center of love, hope, and life moving forward....
but the pain of missing her sister never left her.
Kim’s best friends moved on. One of Kim’s friends, Elise hooked up with Kim’s old boyfriend, J.P.
Fran and Ed lost weight -
A year later - there was an anniversary service...
The police did their work...even closing in on their investigation....but never really any clear-cut resolutions.
I thought about how Ed, Fran,and Lindsay might never be able to reconcile Kim’s death. They might struggle every day - but they may also experience happiness. I was hoping they would have some peaceful - joyful days ahead.
A very real - sad - and compassionate story-
Not a twisty mystery thriller - rather a lonely, desolate journey into the lives who suffered most.
The writing was absolutely beautiful. It was my first book by Stewart O’Nan.
( thank you Bruce)...
It won’t be my last.
April 27, 2016
It is one thing to know; it is another thing to never know at all.
The first murder trial I ever worked was a twelve-year old girl gone missing one November night. The last image of her – other than that fixed in the mind of her killer, as he crushed her skull – was caught by a security camera as she exited her bus. She went missing that night. For months people searched, by the hundreds. Police and detectives and the State Patrol and FBI agents and citizens. By foot and horse and helicopter. Even America’s Most Wanted did a segment. But to no avail. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not find this girl. We think the world is a very small place sometimes, but it is not. The world is very large and filled with dark places and shadows where people disappear and are never seen again. The world is filled with holes and there are times when people fall into them.
She was found my accident. Her body. A young man just terminated from his job went ghost hunting in a park on a Friday night in May. By pure chance, or perhaps tugged by some invisible hand, he found her whitened skull poking up from the grass and leaves. The discovery was its own horror, but also salvation. It allowed for mourning; it allowed for burial – not just of a body, but of the tortured hopes of the imagination.
Songs for the Missing is an immensely powerful, profoundly moving, acutely observed, painfully real book. In a way, it's like The Lovely Bones, without the cheap dead-girl-narrator trick, but it's far superior.
The book starts in 2005. There is a quick couple chapters where we meet young Kim Larsen, a just-graduated high-school senior on her way to college. She lives with her dad, Ed, a real estate agent; her mom, Fran, who works at a hospital; and her younger sister, Lindsay. She is dating J.P. and is friends with Nina and Elise. They are all enjoying a late summer day.
Then she goes missing.
After Kim's disappearance, her family reacts. The police are dragging their feet, because Kim is technically an adult and they don't have authority to start a search. Kim's father gets in his car and patrols the town; her mother goes online, to missing children websites, and then starts printing fliers. Lindsay stays in her room, reading.
There are several chapters detailing the search. This is not a procedural; it is not a thriller. The book is told in a limited third-person omniscient, the point of view smoothly shifting from one character to the next, sometimes on a single page; however, we never see the action through the eyes of a cop or detective. Indeed, most of the cops go without names.
Stewart O'Nan is an incredibly evocative, precise writer. He nails the little things. The little details that make you pause and go, yeah, that is what it's like. He writes in a loose style, slangy and studded with circa-2005 pop culture references. Yet he can also turn a nifty phrase, e.g. "The trees inside the spiked iron fence were old, their roots poking through the dry grass like knucklebones."
For weeks O'Nan follows family and friends as they go through the laborious process of dealing with Kim's disappearance, then grieving the loss of someone who might not be lost. There are searches along the river, and fliers on electric poles, and interviews with local television.
For a moment, you might start to think this is another one of those books, where people come together and save the girl. You start to think back to the standard tropes, and wonder when the crusty-yet-eccentric detective is going to show up. He never does.
O'Nan moves the book forward gracefully, making elegant elisions to the time-line. Several red herrings are dropped before you start to realize that the plot isn't the point. For instance, it's hinted that Kim was involved in drugs; was cheating on her boyfriend; and that this might have be part of the mystery. But this doesn't interest O'Nan. He wants to follow a family through the greatest hell that can be conjured on earth.
The weeks turn to months, and the months to a year. With an unerring eye, O'Nan follows the Larsen family, and their complicated responses. Sometimes you feel the family heading for disaster. Following a tragedy, everyone needs something different, and they expect everyone to know what it is, without asking. Inevitably, no one gets what they needs, and the wages of tragedy are compounded.
At times, this book was so relentlessly, realistically sad that I had to step away. The characters are marvelously drawn and I had a hard time remembering they didn't exist. Their pain became mine, and I'd have to get up and walk around outside in the sunshine, or drink a beer, or eat some cheese, and there were moments I had to do all three, because I felt the despair and to escape that despair, I needed sunlight and beer and cheese.
A book is a contained universe, though; and life is not contained. Tragedy has no endpoint, yet somehow, you must go on. You have to live, somehow, with this tragedy. And the genius of this book is that it doesn't go the cheap route and show the Larsen's disintegrate. Instead, it gives you these slivers of hope in the darkness. There are powerful scenes: the first time Ed and Fran make love; a barbecue in the backyard that is perfect, until Fran realizes that it isn't perfect; an incredible scene where Ed and Fran go fishing on Lake Erie on a fogbound dawn.
I won't give away the ending. Suffice it to say, it is earned, and at a price.
The best character in the book is Lindsay, the sister, because her response is the most complicated. She misses her sister and also resents her sister. O'Nan's portrayal of her is insightful and compassionate. The final pages, the last paragraph, is devoted to Lindsay, and it is heartbreaking and beautiful; my heart caught in my throat at its near-perfect expression.
Afterward, I ate a cheese stick and drank the rest of the Yellow Tail in the refrigerator. It was that kind of book.
The first murder trial I ever worked was a twelve-year old girl gone missing one November night. The last image of her – other than that fixed in the mind of her killer, as he crushed her skull – was caught by a security camera as she exited her bus. She went missing that night. For months people searched, by the hundreds. Police and detectives and the State Patrol and FBI agents and citizens. By foot and horse and helicopter. Even America’s Most Wanted did a segment. But to no avail. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not find this girl. We think the world is a very small place sometimes, but it is not. The world is very large and filled with dark places and shadows where people disappear and are never seen again. The world is filled with holes and there are times when people fall into them.
She was found my accident. Her body. A young man just terminated from his job went ghost hunting in a park on a Friday night in May. By pure chance, or perhaps tugged by some invisible hand, he found her whitened skull poking up from the grass and leaves. The discovery was its own horror, but also salvation. It allowed for mourning; it allowed for burial – not just of a body, but of the tortured hopes of the imagination.
Songs for the Missing is an immensely powerful, profoundly moving, acutely observed, painfully real book. In a way, it's like The Lovely Bones, without the cheap dead-girl-narrator trick, but it's far superior.
The book starts in 2005. There is a quick couple chapters where we meet young Kim Larsen, a just-graduated high-school senior on her way to college. She lives with her dad, Ed, a real estate agent; her mom, Fran, who works at a hospital; and her younger sister, Lindsay. She is dating J.P. and is friends with Nina and Elise. They are all enjoying a late summer day.
Then she goes missing.
In the middle of the night her father woke up to go to the bathroom and noticed the line of light under their closed door. In the morning the light was still on. Her door was open, her bed untouched. The light in the downstairs hall was on, and the outside light by the back door, invisible during the day. Her car wasn't in the driveway.
The first person her mother called was Nina.
The second was J.P.
The third was Connie and the hospital.
The fourth was the police.
After Kim's disappearance, her family reacts. The police are dragging their feet, because Kim is technically an adult and they don't have authority to start a search. Kim's father gets in his car and patrols the town; her mother goes online, to missing children websites, and then starts printing fliers. Lindsay stays in her room, reading.
There are several chapters detailing the search. This is not a procedural; it is not a thriller. The book is told in a limited third-person omniscient, the point of view smoothly shifting from one character to the next, sometimes on a single page; however, we never see the action through the eyes of a cop or detective. Indeed, most of the cops go without names.
Stewart O'Nan is an incredibly evocative, precise writer. He nails the little things. The little details that make you pause and go, yeah, that is what it's like. He writes in a loose style, slangy and studded with circa-2005 pop culture references. Yet he can also turn a nifty phrase, e.g. "The trees inside the spiked iron fence were old, their roots poking through the dry grass like knucklebones."
For weeks O'Nan follows family and friends as they go through the laborious process of dealing with Kim's disappearance, then grieving the loss of someone who might not be lost. There are searches along the river, and fliers on electric poles, and interviews with local television.
For a moment, you might start to think this is another one of those books, where people come together and save the girl. You start to think back to the standard tropes, and wonder when the crusty-yet-eccentric detective is going to show up. He never does.
O'Nan moves the book forward gracefully, making elegant elisions to the time-line. Several red herrings are dropped before you start to realize that the plot isn't the point. For instance, it's hinted that Kim was involved in drugs; was cheating on her boyfriend; and that this might have be part of the mystery. But this doesn't interest O'Nan. He wants to follow a family through the greatest hell that can be conjured on earth.
The weeks turn to months, and the months to a year. With an unerring eye, O'Nan follows the Larsen family, and their complicated responses. Sometimes you feel the family heading for disaster. Following a tragedy, everyone needs something different, and they expect everyone to know what it is, without asking. Inevitably, no one gets what they needs, and the wages of tragedy are compounded.
At times, this book was so relentlessly, realistically sad that I had to step away. The characters are marvelously drawn and I had a hard time remembering they didn't exist. Their pain became mine, and I'd have to get up and walk around outside in the sunshine, or drink a beer, or eat some cheese, and there were moments I had to do all three, because I felt the despair and to escape that despair, I needed sunlight and beer and cheese.
A book is a contained universe, though; and life is not contained. Tragedy has no endpoint, yet somehow, you must go on. You have to live, somehow, with this tragedy. And the genius of this book is that it doesn't go the cheap route and show the Larsen's disintegrate. Instead, it gives you these slivers of hope in the darkness. There are powerful scenes: the first time Ed and Fran make love; a barbecue in the backyard that is perfect, until Fran realizes that it isn't perfect; an incredible scene where Ed and Fran go fishing on Lake Erie on a fogbound dawn.
I won't give away the ending. Suffice it to say, it is earned, and at a price.
The best character in the book is Lindsay, the sister, because her response is the most complicated. She misses her sister and also resents her sister. O'Nan's portrayal of her is insightful and compassionate. The final pages, the last paragraph, is devoted to Lindsay, and it is heartbreaking and beautiful; my heart caught in my throat at its near-perfect expression.
Afterward, I ate a cheese stick and drank the rest of the Yellow Tail in the refrigerator. It was that kind of book.
February 18, 2021
Songs for the Missing is very well written and is perfectly titled. It shatters our illusion of safety in our daily lives and reminds us the world has teeth and is a dangerous place.
It is an exploration of grief and loss through the lives of all those close to Kim after she disappears. Each chapter is told from a different perspective.
I love books that have an emotional impact on me. No book has had a greater emotional impact than this one. The author captured the heaviness of grief. The listlessness of depression. There were times (in the middle) it was tough to read.
But the author also captures the essence of youth at the onset of the book with the interactions between Kim and her friends and later between Lindsay and hers. The most memorable part of the book for me was when Lyndsay got a job at Quiznos and was “The Cup”.
O’Nan masterfully captured all aspects of the challenges and heartaches the characters faced-jealousy, living in a sibling’s shadow, guilt, and of course, loss. The reader rides the same emotional rollercoaster as the family, left feeling mentally, spiritually, and physically drained. But also, we turn the page, finding a way to move forward and somehow continue living.
It is an exploration of grief and loss through the lives of all those close to Kim after she disappears. Each chapter is told from a different perspective.
I love books that have an emotional impact on me. No book has had a greater emotional impact than this one. The author captured the heaviness of grief. The listlessness of depression. There were times (in the middle) it was tough to read.
But the author also captures the essence of youth at the onset of the book with the interactions between Kim and her friends and later between Lindsay and hers. The most memorable part of the book for me was when Lyndsay got a job at Quiznos and was “The Cup”.
O’Nan masterfully captured all aspects of the challenges and heartaches the characters faced-jealousy, living in a sibling’s shadow, guilt, and of course, loss. The reader rides the same emotional rollercoaster as the family, left feeling mentally, spiritually, and physically drained. But also, we turn the page, finding a way to move forward and somehow continue living.
November 23, 2008
When Stewart O'Nan decides to tell the story of a teenage girl's disappearance, don't go looking for a traditional suspense story -- instead, he chooses to focus on the emotional impact of that disappearance on the girl's family and her closest friends, and almost everything that pertains to the "crime story" takes place off-screen. The result is a quietly devastating set of "snapshots" that relentlessly chip away at our expectations of resolution and closure... while proving that it's still capable to move on even after unimaginable tragedy.
October 4, 2020
A typical quiet O’Nan novel about a girl that goes missing in the summer before she starts college. She spends the day with her friends at the lake, enters her car to drive to work at the gas station and never arrives there.
The author describes how family and friends handle this loss.
I really enjoyed this novel, just like all other Stewart O’Nan books I’ve read.
----------------------------------
Kim hat die Highschool abgeschlossen und verbringt nun die Sommerferien bis zum Beginn des College in ihrem Heimatort in Ohio. Tagsüber hängt sie mit ihren Freunden ab, geht zum Baden und abends arbeitet sie an einem Tankstellenshop. Eines Tages fährt sie vom See los, um zur Arbeit zu kommen, kommt aber dort nie an.
Anders als man vermuten könnte entwickelt sich die Geschichte aber nicht zu einem Krimi, sondern Stewart O’Nan erzählt detailreich und sehr persönlich, wie Familie und Freunde von Kim mit ihrem Verschwinden umgehen. Wie üblich bei O’Nan passiert nichts wirklich Aufregendes, sondern dem Leser wird durch häufige Perspektivwechsel das Seelenleben der Charaktere offengelegt.
Mir ist hier besonders aufgefallen, wie unterschiedlich der Umgang mit solchen Situationen in USA und Europa ist.
Außerdem beschreibt der Autor sehr deutlich die Gefühle, die die Charaktere neben der Trauer über den Verlust empfinden. Im Falle der Eltern ist z.B. Wut und der unbedingte Wille einen Schuldigen zu finden erheblich stärker als die Trauer ausgeprägt.
Ein typischer, unaufgeregter O’Nan-Roman, der ganz stark das Mensch-Sein der Charaktere an die Oberfläche bringt. Ich habe das Buch sehr gerne gelesen.
The author describes how family and friends handle this loss.
I really enjoyed this novel, just like all other Stewart O’Nan books I’ve read.
----------------------------------
Kim hat die Highschool abgeschlossen und verbringt nun die Sommerferien bis zum Beginn des College in ihrem Heimatort in Ohio. Tagsüber hängt sie mit ihren Freunden ab, geht zum Baden und abends arbeitet sie an einem Tankstellenshop. Eines Tages fährt sie vom See los, um zur Arbeit zu kommen, kommt aber dort nie an.
Anders als man vermuten könnte entwickelt sich die Geschichte aber nicht zu einem Krimi, sondern Stewart O’Nan erzählt detailreich und sehr persönlich, wie Familie und Freunde von Kim mit ihrem Verschwinden umgehen. Wie üblich bei O’Nan passiert nichts wirklich Aufregendes, sondern dem Leser wird durch häufige Perspektivwechsel das Seelenleben der Charaktere offengelegt.
Mir ist hier besonders aufgefallen, wie unterschiedlich der Umgang mit solchen Situationen in USA und Europa ist.
Außerdem beschreibt der Autor sehr deutlich die Gefühle, die die Charaktere neben der Trauer über den Verlust empfinden. Im Falle der Eltern ist z.B. Wut und der unbedingte Wille einen Schuldigen zu finden erheblich stärker als die Trauer ausgeprägt.
Ein typischer, unaufgeregter O’Nan-Roman, der ganz stark das Mensch-Sein der Charaktere an die Oberfläche bringt. Ich habe das Buch sehr gerne gelesen.
December 23, 2008
I was going to give this book only two stars because it didn't seem particularly innovative or enthralling, but then I thought about the sad family in the book, and how they'd be hurt by such a low rating. The fact that they feel so real warrants another star.
May 8, 2017
Until recently, I had been a huge consumer of news.... both national and international news... but even if you AREN'T a news consumer, you have most likely heard stories of people disappearing, both adults and children. In the case of children, many are kidnapped by non-custodial parents unhappy with custody orders. In the adult cases, some have decided to walk away and start new lives. And of course, in the remaining cases, foul play is responsible for the person's disappearance. It is the disappearance of a person which is the theme of this novel,Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan.
This story begins on a hot, lazy July day in 2005 in the small Ohio town of Kingsville, situated close to Lake Erie. For Kim Larsen, a recent high school graduate, it is a summer of driving around town in her little Chevette, hanging out at the lake with her boyfriend JP and her two best friends Nina and Elise, working evenings at the local Conoco station and nervously anticipating starting college at Bowling Green. Later, looking back at this routine July day, Kim's family puzzles over what clues they might have missed which would have alerted them to the tragedy which was about to befall them.... or WERE there any clues? To the Larsen family, the day seemed much the same as any other day that summer. Kim Larsen, after spending the morning giving driving lessons to her younger sister, Lyndsay and meeting her friends for a refreshing dip in the lake, got into her car to head home to change her clothes for work... a shift she never showed up for.
At first glance, 'Songs for the Missing' appears to be a mystery. With most mystery stories, the reader and the characters would be provided with clues and the story would ultimately be resolved... happily or not-so-happily. But it quickly became apparent that this story, like is so often true in real life, would not be resolved quite so easily; and the story began to morph into more of a family drama than a simple mystery. With the extraordinary insight into human nature I have come to expect from Stewart O'Nan, his creation of the Larsen family.. Ed, Fran and Lyndsay.. arouses both sympathy and puzzlement. The fear and panic the family experienced when they realized Kim never worked her shift and never arrived home was palpable and I could feel my own heart race and my palms began to sweat. At the same time, I was confused... and even a bit annoyed.. with their hyper-awareness of being judged by the police who had shown up to assist them and the community who organized to help them in their search efforts. I found it difficult to understand why each member of the Larsen family was engaging in blatant self-censorship when describing Kim and their relationships with her. After all, Kim was missing and no one had any idea where she was and if she was even alive. Why would these people who loved her be so concerned with public opinion and approval? Perhaps I am judging them too harshly... I admit that I can hardly bear to imagine how I would feel or react in such a situation.
It became clear, however, that the Larsen family.. like probably every other family in the history of the world.. was not exactly as it appeared to the community. The Larsens, although a family unit, were constructed of individual people and their relationships with each other were unique and complex. And Kim... (as any parent of a young adult knows).. could be quite deceptive and yes, dishonest, behaving one way with her family and quite another with her friends. She had secrets.... each member of the Larsen family had secrets.. and one-by-one, throughout the story, those secrets were revealed.
This novel was fascinating to me for a couple of reasons. It was interesting to see how Mr. O'Nan deconstructed the Larsen family so efficiently into its individual members. Through access to each character's thoughts, the reader gets an unvarnished look in real time at just how complex a family actually is. I also found the 'behind the scenes' look at a family tragedy quite compelling and very sad. If you have ever wondered what is happening to a family and how they are really coping after the unthinkable occurs.. when all of the media attention evaporates and the community returns to its daily routines, you may find this book quite illuminating.
And in case you are wondering... the story does not leave you wondering. There IS a resolution as to what happened to Kim Larsen that July day; but that resolution takes two long and painful years to arrive.
This story begins on a hot, lazy July day in 2005 in the small Ohio town of Kingsville, situated close to Lake Erie. For Kim Larsen, a recent high school graduate, it is a summer of driving around town in her little Chevette, hanging out at the lake with her boyfriend JP and her two best friends Nina and Elise, working evenings at the local Conoco station and nervously anticipating starting college at Bowling Green. Later, looking back at this routine July day, Kim's family puzzles over what clues they might have missed which would have alerted them to the tragedy which was about to befall them.... or WERE there any clues? To the Larsen family, the day seemed much the same as any other day that summer. Kim Larsen, after spending the morning giving driving lessons to her younger sister, Lyndsay and meeting her friends for a refreshing dip in the lake, got into her car to head home to change her clothes for work... a shift she never showed up for.
At first glance, 'Songs for the Missing' appears to be a mystery. With most mystery stories, the reader and the characters would be provided with clues and the story would ultimately be resolved... happily or not-so-happily. But it quickly became apparent that this story, like is so often true in real life, would not be resolved quite so easily; and the story began to morph into more of a family drama than a simple mystery. With the extraordinary insight into human nature I have come to expect from Stewart O'Nan, his creation of the Larsen family.. Ed, Fran and Lyndsay.. arouses both sympathy and puzzlement. The fear and panic the family experienced when they realized Kim never worked her shift and never arrived home was palpable and I could feel my own heart race and my palms began to sweat. At the same time, I was confused... and even a bit annoyed.. with their hyper-awareness of being judged by the police who had shown up to assist them and the community who organized to help them in their search efforts. I found it difficult to understand why each member of the Larsen family was engaging in blatant self-censorship when describing Kim and their relationships with her. After all, Kim was missing and no one had any idea where she was and if she was even alive. Why would these people who loved her be so concerned with public opinion and approval? Perhaps I am judging them too harshly... I admit that I can hardly bear to imagine how I would feel or react in such a situation.
It became clear, however, that the Larsen family.. like probably every other family in the history of the world.. was not exactly as it appeared to the community. The Larsens, although a family unit, were constructed of individual people and their relationships with each other were unique and complex. And Kim... (as any parent of a young adult knows).. could be quite deceptive and yes, dishonest, behaving one way with her family and quite another with her friends. She had secrets.... each member of the Larsen family had secrets.. and one-by-one, throughout the story, those secrets were revealed.
This novel was fascinating to me for a couple of reasons. It was interesting to see how Mr. O'Nan deconstructed the Larsen family so efficiently into its individual members. Through access to each character's thoughts, the reader gets an unvarnished look in real time at just how complex a family actually is. I also found the 'behind the scenes' look at a family tragedy quite compelling and very sad. If you have ever wondered what is happening to a family and how they are really coping after the unthinkable occurs.. when all of the media attention evaporates and the community returns to its daily routines, you may find this book quite illuminating.
And in case you are wondering... the story does not leave you wondering. There IS a resolution as to what happened to Kim Larsen that July day; but that resolution takes two long and painful years to arrive.
July 16, 2016
3.5 Stars
September 28, 2023
Kim is on the cusp of adulthood, her last summer before college. She drives away and is never seen again. The story is an intimate portrait of the family she left behind, her parents and younger sister, Lindsay. The community rallies around the family, there are extensive searches of the area, fundraising efforts, press coverage, meals delivered to their door by neighbours, and then gradually life returns to normal for most folks leaving the family with their grief and unrelenting emptiness.
Stewart O'Nan writes quiet novels focusing on characters. This is not a crime novel, it is the aftermath of a tragedy with no end in sight. Having said that, I found it oddly lacking in emotional impact. 3.5 stars for now, I'll have to think about this some more.
Stewart O'Nan writes quiet novels focusing on characters. This is not a crime novel, it is the aftermath of a tragedy with no end in sight. Having said that, I found it oddly lacking in emotional impact. 3.5 stars for now, I'll have to think about this some more.
September 8, 2008
Just weeks from leaving for college, Kim feels herself on the brink of an exciting new life. Like most teens, she keeps secrets from her parents, but she’s a good kid. Then, one summer day, she vanishes. She’s simply gone.
Songs for the Missing is less about Kim herself than about those destined to struggle in the aftermath of her disappearance. Told from the varying perspectives of her mother, father, and younger sister, and her boyfriend and two best friends, the narrative takes the reader through their reactions at different points of the story, which covers a period of two years. Their thoughts and feelings, actions and dilemmas, coping strategies and attempts to move forward in their own lives, are clearly delineated, evolving with time. Some of these elements they all share, while each individual also has his/her idiosyncratic reactions. At the heart of the story, however, are Kim’s parents, who are very different in their endeavors to find their daughter while they fight to survive the overwhelming nature of their loss and their fears.
Ultimately, this somber, powerful novel leaves more questions unanswered than resolved. To explicate here would be to spoil the story. But Songs is a beautifully expressed journey that takes the reader partway through the nightmare of losing a child, a sister, a friend. “Closure”, a word bandied about by the media, is a specious term when applied to these situations, for how can one ever truly put this sort of catastrophe behind them?
Songs for the Missing is less about Kim herself than about those destined to struggle in the aftermath of her disappearance. Told from the varying perspectives of her mother, father, and younger sister, and her boyfriend and two best friends, the narrative takes the reader through their reactions at different points of the story, which covers a period of two years. Their thoughts and feelings, actions and dilemmas, coping strategies and attempts to move forward in their own lives, are clearly delineated, evolving with time. Some of these elements they all share, while each individual also has his/her idiosyncratic reactions. At the heart of the story, however, are Kim’s parents, who are very different in their endeavors to find their daughter while they fight to survive the overwhelming nature of their loss and their fears.
Ultimately, this somber, powerful novel leaves more questions unanswered than resolved. To explicate here would be to spoil the story. But Songs is a beautifully expressed journey that takes the reader partway through the nightmare of losing a child, a sister, a friend. “Closure”, a word bandied about by the media, is a specious term when applied to these situations, for how can one ever truly put this sort of catastrophe behind them?
March 9, 2019
I bought this book a long time ago, when it first came out in 2008. It's taken me this long to read it, and I'm very glad I did. "Songs" is a haunting book. The basic story has a familiar shape but a unique execution. A small Ohio town is shaken when a teenage girl on the verge of going to college suddenly disappears. The book traces how the people closest to the girl -- parents, sister, friends, boyfriend, neighbors --react over time. O'Nan does something very different here than what one might expect. There are no fireworks, no extended action scenes that culminate in shootouts with the bad guys, none of the apparatus of the generic missing child thriller. Rather, we see the unfolding of ordinary people responding to the trauma of a missing teenager, with all that entails: the endless pain of not-knowing, the desperate need parents feel to do something/anything, the fear and sadness, the guilty feelings, suspicions, frustrations, and the emotional contradictions. The reader comes to know and care about these people. They are real people, the kind of folk one might meet anywhere in the American heartland. In another writer's hands, this might have been a ponderous, depressing as hell story. As O'Nan wrote it, it's neither of these things.
Entirely by coincidence, I happened to read this as I was reading "Parkland." Unsurprisingly, the books spilled over into one another a little. The families, the teenagers, the reactions to a shocking event -- what I read in one book added a measure of depth or poignancy to the other.
Entirely by coincidence, I happened to read this as I was reading "Parkland." Unsurprisingly, the books spilled over into one another a little. The families, the teenagers, the reactions to a shocking event -- what I read in one book added a measure of depth or poignancy to the other.
February 11, 2009
I'm really not recommending this book; it explores a family's nightmare. Their oldest daughter, Kim, disappears one day on the way to work. At first of course they think she's run away but there's no reason to- she's off to college in just a few weeks. And so the book unrolls from various people's perspectives- the mom, the dad, the sister, the boyfriend, the best friend and he does a good job of mining the different experiences of loss. When did I give up hope? When did they? But as everyone knows the longer the missing stay missing, the less chance they will be found alive. So why did I go on reading? The same reason the family and friends go on looking, hoping, organizing- it's hope- painful hope. I have to admire O'Nan's style; I experienced the same thing the characters did. But as well written as it might be, I cannot recommend it. Even though I couldn't put it down.
October 24, 2022
Oh my heart. 😢😢😢😢. This is the beautiful, desolate, lonely, and gorgeously told story of a family, friends, and community who have lost one of their own. Kim Larsen is a young woman poised to leave her hometown on the lake in Cleveland to begin college, when she vanishes. Her mother, Fran, her father, Ed, and her younger sister, Lindsey all react and cope in their own ways, along with her best friends, as the search goes on and on. This story is told so well, so poignantly, with an understated and nuanced style. I loved and ached for every single character in their loss and grief. I have great admiration for this author who was able to develop these characters and flesh out this small town community. I will not forget this family.
January 21, 2009
This book really wasn't worth my time. It had the makings of a great book but really never went anywhere. I found the family a little creepy and at the same time couldn't really get into their characters.
March 26, 2012
I told Stewart O'Nan, at a book signing recently, that I didn't think he was capable of writing a bad book. He laughed and said that he could very well prove Me wrong.
After reading "Songs for the Missing", I'm no less convinced of what I said -- he is an amazing writer.
That being said, however, I was hoping for this to be better than it turned out to be. O'Nan is always brilliant at writing about the mundanities of everyday life. His prose is always simple, yet powerful. Unfortunately, with this novel, I never felt the power that I'm used to from his writing.
One of the reasons this fell a little flat, I think, is because in writing about how each character deals with the missing "loved one", everyone dealt with the loss in almost identical ways. They all seemed emotionally detached, unconcerned, and uncommitted. Consequently, as a reader, I felt the same. While I could appreciate the great writing, I never cared about the victim or the ones left behind. They seemed uninterested in the outcome and in a hurry to move on, and I felt similarly.
So, Mr. O'Nan will have to try again to prove Me wrong..., and he came about as close this time, I think, as he's likely to come.
After reading "Songs for the Missing", I'm no less convinced of what I said -- he is an amazing writer.
That being said, however, I was hoping for this to be better than it turned out to be. O'Nan is always brilliant at writing about the mundanities of everyday life. His prose is always simple, yet powerful. Unfortunately, with this novel, I never felt the power that I'm used to from his writing.
One of the reasons this fell a little flat, I think, is because in writing about how each character deals with the missing "loved one", everyone dealt with the loss in almost identical ways. They all seemed emotionally detached, unconcerned, and uncommitted. Consequently, as a reader, I felt the same. While I could appreciate the great writing, I never cared about the victim or the ones left behind. They seemed uninterested in the outcome and in a hurry to move on, and I felt similarly.
So, Mr. O'Nan will have to try again to prove Me wrong..., and he came about as close this time, I think, as he's likely to come.
December 22, 2013
Stewart O'Nan is a daredevil minimalist, an ardent student of the things people do in between the exciting things other authors write about. In his most recent novel, Last Night of the Lobster, he described the final 10 hours of a Red Lobster restaurant in a Connecticut shopping mall. A fire? A gunman? Legionnaire's disease? No, just budget cuts handed down from the main office. The cooks, waitresses and manager all know what's coming, and so do we. It's a story practically allergic to suspense, but the sensitivity of O'Nan's voice makes it strangely compelling.
Now, 12 months later, his new novel, Songs for the Missing, seems like a sellout. The first chapter sets up a classic thriller premise, strewn with ominous clues: A pretty 18-year-old girl named Kim Larsen leaves her friends at the beach and drives to her part-time job at a gas station. She never arrives. That night her parents notice she hasn't come home. They call her classmates. They call the hospital. They call the police.
We know how this should play out: the accrual of alarming details, mixed with a few false leads; growing suspicion that the devoted father/mother/sister/dog is hiding something; a horrific vision of the crime from the victim's or the murderer's point of view; and finally a shocking revelation. But O'Nan ignores all these conventions in favor of an approach so mundane you can't believe it works, the thriller equivalent of watching blood dry. He's a connoisseur of waiting, and it's his discipline, his refusal to deviate even for a single sentence from the uneventful, dull terror of losing a child, that makes Songs of the Missing so troubling.
Kim's disappearance is at the heart of this novel, but its real concern is with her family members. They have no way of knowing if they're dealing with a simple misunderstanding, an act of teenage rebellion or a capital crime. Even starting the search in earnest seems to Kim's parents like a horrible admission of disaster, but when the initial round of phone calls yields nothing, her father, Ed, feels impelled to do something, get in his car and find her. "They would all laugh at him later, he imagined, Dad freaking out, driving around like a maniac. That was fine with him, as long as she was all right. He didn't expect to see anything." O'Nan follows the trajectory of Ed's panicked thoughts with quiet sympathy: "He'd felt helpless at times in his life, over money troubles most recently, or, more often, the unhappiness of a loved one. This was different. His usually reliable talents of hustle and attention to detail were worthless against the unknown, and he was frightened."
Kim's mother, Fran, is equally afraid, but she reacts differently. As a nurse, "she honored calmness above all, trusting efficiency over emotion." Most of the novel focuses on the mechanics of their search, which Fran pursues with unwavering self-control, an astute study in the way men and women respond to crisis. "The feeling of uselessness nagged" at Ed, but Fran throws herself into these exhausting routines, if only to forestall a descent into madness. "There was a logical order to their panic," Fran thinks. "Every failure led to the next step."
Here once again, O'Nan proves himself the patron saint of labor. These frantic parents have so much to do besides worry: assembling lists of names to contact; canvassing the town with posters; organizing hundreds of volunteers for grid-by-grid searches; staging a "Kare-a-Van for Kim"; ordering buttons, T-shirts and balloons; and trolling through thousands of leads that pour in from witnesses, cranks, psychics and well-wishers. And there are Web sites to monitor and daily blog entries to post -- a whole industry of grieving parents pedaling scraps of hope to each other around the country.
More depressing is O'Nan's clear-eyed portrayal of the media and their double-edged role in these tragedies. "The networks were hungry for missing girl stories," he writes. Fran realizes early that her daughter's disappearance needs to be marketed to get what she wants: maximum exposure as quickly as possible. Even while terrified by thoughts of what might have happened, she must carefully choose the right clothing ("A white blouse would turn into a blob of light" on TV) and train herself to deliver an appropriate appeal. "You don't want to come off as hysterical," a friend advises. "You don't want to be too cool either. . . . It's like advertising." Kim's sister is pushed into the glare of publicity, too: "You're like a celebrity," a well-meaning classmate tells her. Stripped of drama, here is the whole tedious, humiliating, heart-rending work of searching for a loved one.
What holds our attention through all this is O'Nan's careful focus on the minds of shaken family members trapped in a task that consumes their lives and their livelihood. "It was how they told time," O'Nan writes. "They'd picked up the awkward yardstick used by new parents. . . . They counted backwards, snagged on that last day." Forced to go through the motions of hope long after real hope has drained away, they eventually reach that unspeakable place of just wishing it were all over. Ed "no longer looked forward to anything," O'Nan writes. "Pretending to be interested took a constant effort. When he was by himself, he went slack." In scene after scene, these spare descriptions will make you catch your breath. Some are just frozen moments: Fran sitting in her daughter's car in the garage, "both hands on the wheel, as if she was actually going somewhere." Others are masterfully designed sequences: Fran shopping all day for Christmas presents, determined to get her missing daughter just the right thing.
In the end, Kim's family receives neither the resolution they hoped for nor the one they feared. The world that O'Nan captures thwarts our expectations for cathartic tragedy or gleeful celebration, which makes the story even more devastating. This isn't the nightmare of losing your daughter; this is the numbing reality of it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
Now, 12 months later, his new novel, Songs for the Missing, seems like a sellout. The first chapter sets up a classic thriller premise, strewn with ominous clues: A pretty 18-year-old girl named Kim Larsen leaves her friends at the beach and drives to her part-time job at a gas station. She never arrives. That night her parents notice she hasn't come home. They call her classmates. They call the hospital. They call the police.
We know how this should play out: the accrual of alarming details, mixed with a few false leads; growing suspicion that the devoted father/mother/sister/dog is hiding something; a horrific vision of the crime from the victim's or the murderer's point of view; and finally a shocking revelation. But O'Nan ignores all these conventions in favor of an approach so mundane you can't believe it works, the thriller equivalent of watching blood dry. He's a connoisseur of waiting, and it's his discipline, his refusal to deviate even for a single sentence from the uneventful, dull terror of losing a child, that makes Songs of the Missing so troubling.
Kim's disappearance is at the heart of this novel, but its real concern is with her family members. They have no way of knowing if they're dealing with a simple misunderstanding, an act of teenage rebellion or a capital crime. Even starting the search in earnest seems to Kim's parents like a horrible admission of disaster, but when the initial round of phone calls yields nothing, her father, Ed, feels impelled to do something, get in his car and find her. "They would all laugh at him later, he imagined, Dad freaking out, driving around like a maniac. That was fine with him, as long as she was all right. He didn't expect to see anything." O'Nan follows the trajectory of Ed's panicked thoughts with quiet sympathy: "He'd felt helpless at times in his life, over money troubles most recently, or, more often, the unhappiness of a loved one. This was different. His usually reliable talents of hustle and attention to detail were worthless against the unknown, and he was frightened."
Kim's mother, Fran, is equally afraid, but she reacts differently. As a nurse, "she honored calmness above all, trusting efficiency over emotion." Most of the novel focuses on the mechanics of their search, which Fran pursues with unwavering self-control, an astute study in the way men and women respond to crisis. "The feeling of uselessness nagged" at Ed, but Fran throws herself into these exhausting routines, if only to forestall a descent into madness. "There was a logical order to their panic," Fran thinks. "Every failure led to the next step."
Here once again, O'Nan proves himself the patron saint of labor. These frantic parents have so much to do besides worry: assembling lists of names to contact; canvassing the town with posters; organizing hundreds of volunteers for grid-by-grid searches; staging a "Kare-a-Van for Kim"; ordering buttons, T-shirts and balloons; and trolling through thousands of leads that pour in from witnesses, cranks, psychics and well-wishers. And there are Web sites to monitor and daily blog entries to post -- a whole industry of grieving parents pedaling scraps of hope to each other around the country.
More depressing is O'Nan's clear-eyed portrayal of the media and their double-edged role in these tragedies. "The networks were hungry for missing girl stories," he writes. Fran realizes early that her daughter's disappearance needs to be marketed to get what she wants: maximum exposure as quickly as possible. Even while terrified by thoughts of what might have happened, she must carefully choose the right clothing ("A white blouse would turn into a blob of light" on TV) and train herself to deliver an appropriate appeal. "You don't want to come off as hysterical," a friend advises. "You don't want to be too cool either. . . . It's like advertising." Kim's sister is pushed into the glare of publicity, too: "You're like a celebrity," a well-meaning classmate tells her. Stripped of drama, here is the whole tedious, humiliating, heart-rending work of searching for a loved one.
What holds our attention through all this is O'Nan's careful focus on the minds of shaken family members trapped in a task that consumes their lives and their livelihood. "It was how they told time," O'Nan writes. "They'd picked up the awkward yardstick used by new parents. . . . They counted backwards, snagged on that last day." Forced to go through the motions of hope long after real hope has drained away, they eventually reach that unspeakable place of just wishing it were all over. Ed "no longer looked forward to anything," O'Nan writes. "Pretending to be interested took a constant effort. When he was by himself, he went slack." In scene after scene, these spare descriptions will make you catch your breath. Some are just frozen moments: Fran sitting in her daughter's car in the garage, "both hands on the wheel, as if she was actually going somewhere." Others are masterfully designed sequences: Fran shopping all day for Christmas presents, determined to get her missing daughter just the right thing.
In the end, Kim's family receives neither the resolution they hoped for nor the one they feared. The world that O'Nan captures thwarts our expectations for cathartic tragedy or gleeful celebration, which makes the story even more devastating. This isn't the nightmare of losing your daughter; this is the numbing reality of it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
January 17, 2009
This book took me much longer to read than most books do. I liked the characters and I liked the story line, but found myself bored with the repeativness of the telling of the story. It could have been condensed into a short story for me.
December 17, 2008
Wow, what a tough book to rate. I loved how it was written, and the voices of the characters. Beautiful language and honest description of the teenagers.
But somehow a lot of it range false, almost from the moment Kim went missing. Cops stepping into high gear for someone who's technically an adult? The mother perkily making flyers? I couldn't buy it. Maybe that's how some people react in a crisis, but if someone I loved vanished into thin air I'd be a wreck. And it seemed that they accepted that she was dead a bit too easily. Sliding back into the normal life of softball games, playing with the dog, doing TV interviews ... I just couldn't sympathize with the parents much.
I only finished this book a couple of days ago and I had to really reach into my memory to form this review, which is telling. It didn't stick with me.
Oh, and Mr. O'Nan? The Killers ARE NOT British!
But somehow a lot of it range false, almost from the moment Kim went missing. Cops stepping into high gear for someone who's technically an adult? The mother perkily making flyers? I couldn't buy it. Maybe that's how some people react in a crisis, but if someone I loved vanished into thin air I'd be a wreck. And it seemed that they accepted that she was dead a bit too easily. Sliding back into the normal life of softball games, playing with the dog, doing TV interviews ... I just couldn't sympathize with the parents much.
I only finished this book a couple of days ago and I had to really reach into my memory to form this review, which is telling. It didn't stick with me.
Oh, and Mr. O'Nan? The Killers ARE NOT British!
January 20, 2009
A few weeks before leaving for college, Kim Larsen disappeared on her way to work in a small town in Ohio. This book deals with the aftermath of her disappearance on her family, friends, and on the residents of the town itself. Despite the usual reactions--desperate searches that go on for days, television appearances and pleas--this book examines the effect of living with the unknown. As a family begins to unravel and each person dealt with the tragedy in their own way, questions are raised about when do you stop the daily searches, how should you react to the press and to friends, and when do you try to begin to move beyond Kim's presumed death and start to rebuild some kind of life. And Kim's friends have to deal with their relationships with each other and decide how much to tell the family and the authorities about Kim's semi-secret teenage life.
November 7, 2019
Mit dem Begriff Thriller wird im Klappentext etwas fahrlässig umgegangen, denn im Grunde ist es ein Roman, der sich vor allem dem Trauma widmet, das die Eltern, die Schwester und die engen Freunde nach dem unerklärlichen Verschwinden eines Mädchens durchleiden. Das wird von einigen Lesern als langweilig empfunden, ich bin jedoch der Meinung, dass O’Nan sehr präzise diesen Zustand zwischen Betäubung und absoluter Klarheit beschreibt - wenn jede Minute, jede Handlung mit Bedeutung aufgeladen ist, weil man nicht weiß, welchem Schicksal die Vermisste gerade ausgesetzt ist, welche Schuld man eventuell am derzeitigen Zustand der Welt hat, in der der Alltag gnadenlos weiterläuft.
February 11, 2024
It’s the idyllic summer after high school graduation with the anticipation of leaving for college, and Kim is savoring it. When Kim doesn’t show up for her work shift, all her family can do is notify the police and HOPE.
O’Nan has an excellent grasp on how to convey the effects of loss. We witness how Kim’s friends and family cope with her absence and the uncertainty of her fate. Her mom, dad, sister, best friend, and boyfriend all deal with the fallout of her disappearance in different ways. Some people need to keep busy, others want to feel useful, while some retreat into solitude. The book does a great job of realistically portraying the need to find closure, though I thought there were some aspects of the plot that should have been less vague. Otherwise, it was a skillful depiction of grief and the best O’Nan book I’ve yet read.
O’Nan has an excellent grasp on how to convey the effects of loss. We witness how Kim’s friends and family cope with her absence and the uncertainty of her fate. Her mom, dad, sister, best friend, and boyfriend all deal with the fallout of her disappearance in different ways. Some people need to keep busy, others want to feel useful, while some retreat into solitude. The book does a great job of realistically portraying the need to find closure, though I thought there were some aspects of the plot that should have been less vague. Otherwise, it was a skillful depiction of grief and the best O’Nan book I’ve yet read.
September 25, 2014
Kingsville was one of those many forgettable towns that the cars on I-90 passed, at best a gas fill-up between Youngstown, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, and beyond. Comfortable, predictable, boring. The Larsen family is typical. Kim has a summer job at the convenience store of the local gas staion. In the fall she will be off to college. Her younger sister Lindsay will be a sophomore in the fall, too young to hang with Kim and her friends. Their dad Ed is a realtor who likes to go fishing in his spare time; the mom Fran is an emergency room nurse. They even have a dog, Cooper.
Then, Kim goes missing. Kim, the enthusiastic optimist, the extrovert whom everyone loves. The event is a stark contrast to the portrait of ordinariness the author has presented.
The narrative unfolds in two directions. First, there is the step-by-step procedural of family anxiety. There is the phone call to the police. Much of the “critical first 24 hours” is spent waiting and answering questions that seem pointless. There are the frantic phone calls to a widening circle of neighbors. The tension and unease grows. Ed deals with the police. Being in sales himself, he is acutely aware of when he is being “worked”; as he reports back to Fran, “he worried that he was selling her the same flashy package the police had tried to sell him.” (p.107) He worries about balancing candor with reassurance. Frustrated with the police for their apparent lack of urgency and their hints that Kim might be a runaway, the family constructs their own search strategy: Flyers, a website, a tip line, search parties, a media plan. Particularly striking is the amount of staging required to project the image of looking “natural” to the public. Fran's friend works in P.R. at the hospital and coaches her.
The other direction is the psychological disintegration of the individual family members. At a time when the situation calls for unity, each of them sinks into a cocoon of privacy to reconstruct some semblance of safety and normality that has been shattered. Fran awakes from Ambien induced sleep. “...the street was quiet, motionless except for a crew resealing the Naismiths' driveway. The house was clean, Lindsay was still asleep. The day spread before her like a desert.” (p.134). At some point each of them realizes that this has become a search-and-recover endeavor. Yet, to admit that openly feels like a betrayal of Kim. If the candle of hope can be kept burning, Kim might still be alive. Logic battles magical thinking.
O'Nan has written a compelling story that conveys the emotional texture of grief for a missing loved one. He explores the unexpected uniqueness of each person's grief. That subjectivity makes it difficult for each character to acknowledge the needs of the living. Closure is a liberation from memory's imprisonment.
Then, Kim goes missing. Kim, the enthusiastic optimist, the extrovert whom everyone loves. The event is a stark contrast to the portrait of ordinariness the author has presented.
The narrative unfolds in two directions. First, there is the step-by-step procedural of family anxiety. There is the phone call to the police. Much of the “critical first 24 hours” is spent waiting and answering questions that seem pointless. There are the frantic phone calls to a widening circle of neighbors. The tension and unease grows. Ed deals with the police. Being in sales himself, he is acutely aware of when he is being “worked”; as he reports back to Fran, “he worried that he was selling her the same flashy package the police had tried to sell him.” (p.107) He worries about balancing candor with reassurance. Frustrated with the police for their apparent lack of urgency and their hints that Kim might be a runaway, the family constructs their own search strategy: Flyers, a website, a tip line, search parties, a media plan. Particularly striking is the amount of staging required to project the image of looking “natural” to the public. Fran's friend works in P.R. at the hospital and coaches her.
The other direction is the psychological disintegration of the individual family members. At a time when the situation calls for unity, each of them sinks into a cocoon of privacy to reconstruct some semblance of safety and normality that has been shattered. Fran awakes from Ambien induced sleep. “...the street was quiet, motionless except for a crew resealing the Naismiths' driveway. The house was clean, Lindsay was still asleep. The day spread before her like a desert.” (p.134). At some point each of them realizes that this has become a search-and-recover endeavor. Yet, to admit that openly feels like a betrayal of Kim. If the candle of hope can be kept burning, Kim might still be alive. Logic battles magical thinking.
O'Nan has written a compelling story that conveys the emotional texture of grief for a missing loved one. He explores the unexpected uniqueness of each person's grief. That subjectivity makes it difficult for each character to acknowledge the needs of the living. Closure is a liberation from memory's imprisonment.
April 21, 2014
This book is pretty brilliant. It’s also sad and introspective and thought-provoking, but mostly brilliant. It’s the story of Kim Larsen, a pretty 18-year-old, who disappears mysteriously one summer night. The police are lackadaisical about her disappearance at first, but foul play becomes evident before long. It’s a tabloid, true crime-ish plot, but it’s not really about Kim’s disappearance, or the investigation or the person who kidnapped her. It’s about the family she left behind (her mother, father and younger sister) and about the friends and boyfriend that had seen her several hours before her disappearance. The book is sparing and almost flat and I think this is purposeful. We tend to look at cases—disappearances, in particular—and concoct all of these dramatic and speculative horror stories or conspiracies, but the reality almost always seems so different. There is an initial surge of interest—a huge media push for anything, everything the family can offer. They give as much as they can and soon it fades away to a daily monotony. This portion of the book seems almost like a purgatory, with the family acting close to their normal selves. It seems strange to the reader that the family is not more dysfunctional or emotionally unstable, but taken as a whole, you can see their slow exhaustion from riding a bubble of hope and expectation. When they grow tired and that becomes too difficult to maintain, there is nothing left for them to do but resume the “normal” lives that had been put on hold. Movies and the media have led us to expect a certain kind of grieving or suspense in stories like this, but I expect this portrayal is more accurate. It feels more accurate, anyway. I occasionally watch the show Disappeared on ID and am always frustrated, sad and incredulous at the episodes where the missing person seems to have vanished into thin air. The show’s interviews with family and friends seem to echo a lot of the sadness and the desperate emptiness that O’Nan has woven into each of the characters in this book. I am glad I read it: Though it is occasionally slow and mundane, these are the same qualities that make the book so meaningful.
July 23, 2023
Rating: 3.5
June 20, 2019
I spent a long time deciding what rating to give this book. Some review that I read, the people said it was slow...it was. They said it was boring...indeed, sometimes it was. They said that Stewart O' Nan portrayed the characters like real people facing the disappearance of an 18 year old daughter...he certainly did. He made the family and the entire small Ohio town "real"...sometimes almost too real as he allowed the reader to feel what Kim's parents, her 15 year old sister, her friends that lied to the police to begin with...and even Cooper, the family dog...felt as they struggled fr 18 long months to hold their family together and endlessly...tirelessly, search for Kim...the missing part of their hearts....and how in spite of everything, life simply must go on.
February 23, 2015
Stuart O'Nan writes with simplicity and profound power. His writing is spare, yet it possesses depth and grace. He has not failed these facilities in narrating this sad, very moving tale. It is the story of a teen age girl, a recent high school graduate, who has disappeared. He has deftly approached this by introducing the reader to her parents, her sister and her friends, and powerfully displaying the responses of these individuals to their loss. It is a haunting, evocative and suspenseful achievement.
January 25, 2009
The concept is intriguing, the story has potential. But it drags and there is actually very little that happens. A family and friends need to cope with the sudden disappearance of a college-bound young woman. It's more about everyone's feelings of loss, grief, guilt, etc, than about propelling the action forward. I'm about 2/3 of the way through and find myself skimming through it mostly to find out what happens and be done. Not badly written, just not a favorite read.
October 30, 2016
I didn't like this book nearly as much as I liked the others I read by this author. It felt a bit more cliched and didn't really arouse the emotion in me that I would have expected. The last few chapters picked up somewhat, but overall it was kind of "meh" for me.
July 16, 2009
I wasn't crazy about this book. Almost didn't finish it. It was readable in some parts and just droned on in others. I didn't really relate to any of the characters and actually disliked Lindsay.
April 21, 2022
Ordinary life in the small Ohio town of Kingsville. Summer of 2005, and Kim Larsen, 18, is eager for the days to pass, 39 until she leaves for college, leaves behind her realtor-father, her hospital administration mother, her nerdy and bright younger sister, and Kim, a beautiful and popular girl, takes her sister on a driving lesson, then spends the day at the lake with her best friends and boyfriend, before returning home to dress for her shift at the local Conocco gas station. It's the next morning before anyone realizes she's gone missing. This is not a whodunit, though it has elements of mystery and suspense, but instead is a thoughtful narrative that traces the impact of her disappearance on her family, her friends, and the community. It's about love and sorrow, how hope and suffering are entwined, and is a novel that shimmers with humanity.
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