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The Missing
This book - part autobiography, part inquiry into mystery, part social history - tries to find out how people can disappear without a trace, and looks at the impact these disappearances can have on communities.
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First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Andrew O'Hagan
56 books749 followersAndrew O'Hagan, FRSL (born 1968) is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author.
He is the author of the novels Our Fathers, Personality, and Be Near Me, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His work has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Guardian (UK). In 2003, O’Hagan was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. He lives in London, England.
He is the author of the novels Our Fathers, Personality, and Be Near Me, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His work has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Guardian (UK). In 2003, O’Hagan was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. He lives in London, England.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
May 8, 2022
A different sort of book, unique among those that I have read. Starts as a biography of a childhood in the west of Scotland, which was of interest as that's where I grew up at a similar time. But then skews into an essay on missing people in Britai n in the late 80s and early 90s, leading to the gruesome discoveries in Glouchester of the victims of Fred and Rosemary West. The edition I read also added a mid-2000s musing on the spread of CCTV, surveillance and the internet on society, which has turned out to be prescient. Plenty of intriguing thoughts to ponder.
January 24, 2019
Brilliant book part biography, part autobiography part investigative journalism. I am more familiar with O'Hagan's writing through the pages of London Review of Books. As a critic and a journo/pampleteer he is never afraid to ruffle a few feathers on both the right-on Left and toe-the-line Right. His long article on Grenfell Tower pointed out things that other people had failed to address and as such put himself in the firing line of both the residents who escaped the inferno and the investigators of the tragedy. The points he raised were valid and needed to be said.
This starts out with a familial biography investigating his past in Glasgow and the disappearance (through drowning when his ship was torpedoed) of his grandfather. This particular incidence and expression of 'Missing' leads him into examining other 'missings' in his own personal past when the family had moved to the new Ayrshire coastal town of Irvine.
These autobiographical sections lead into the real meat of the story which is an investigation into the murders perpetrated by Fred and Rosemary West and the missings and disappearances associated with their multiple murders and burials. Always the thinking writer rather than the reporter, for which he is often mistaken by the inhabitants of Gloucester when he was investigating the case and working on 'The Missing'. This in itself, though far from being the usual tabloidese 'News of the World' shocker makes for an interesting read and leads O'Hagan into an investigation of the blind anomie which our society has evolved into. The Wests could only get away with the multiple killings and rapes and abuse that they did because we live in a society which is not interested, doesn't want to become involved, wants to lead it's own life and appears to be afraid to speak out when something is not right, afraid to point out the Emperor's bare-arsed new clothes. As the saying goes..... just move along, nothing to see here.
The natural step on from this is to investigate the vast numbers of missing persons or 'mispers' as per official jargon which predominantly end up in London but which have now become part and parcel of the homeless of every city in the United Kingdom. EVERY city. Not just London. And which has seen massive growth in numbers from the 1960s onwards. Many are never reported missing and so do not even show up on statistics. Some want to disappear for one reason or another. All appear to end up emotionally and physically damaged. Who are these people and what drove them to embark on their disappearance? What gives in the lack of community that can allow this to happen?
This is a hard book to classify in terms of what kind of writing it is. Documentary? Autobiography? Journalism? Memoir? Expose? Critical Writing? Does it matter. O'Hagan's writing is as ever challenging and excellent and like the very best of writers he makes you think beyond, outside of the written text. I suppose the only other kind of book I can imagine coming close to this kind of work would be George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London. The same kind of intensity pervades the text. In the same way that those two books spoke, The Missing is about the dispossessed and the underclass, those that are easily overlooked by the mainstream because they live on the peripheries.
This is a dark book. A dark book that illuminates a dark side to what we have allowed society to become. What is 'home' and what drives people from it. Where are the Missing?
This starts out with a familial biography investigating his past in Glasgow and the disappearance (through drowning when his ship was torpedoed) of his grandfather. This particular incidence and expression of 'Missing' leads him into examining other 'missings' in his own personal past when the family had moved to the new Ayrshire coastal town of Irvine.
These autobiographical sections lead into the real meat of the story which is an investigation into the murders perpetrated by Fred and Rosemary West and the missings and disappearances associated with their multiple murders and burials. Always the thinking writer rather than the reporter, for which he is often mistaken by the inhabitants of Gloucester when he was investigating the case and working on 'The Missing'. This in itself, though far from being the usual tabloidese 'News of the World' shocker makes for an interesting read and leads O'Hagan into an investigation of the blind anomie which our society has evolved into. The Wests could only get away with the multiple killings and rapes and abuse that they did because we live in a society which is not interested, doesn't want to become involved, wants to lead it's own life and appears to be afraid to speak out when something is not right, afraid to point out the Emperor's bare-arsed new clothes. As the saying goes..... just move along, nothing to see here.
The natural step on from this is to investigate the vast numbers of missing persons or 'mispers' as per official jargon which predominantly end up in London but which have now become part and parcel of the homeless of every city in the United Kingdom. EVERY city. Not just London. And which has seen massive growth in numbers from the 1960s onwards. Many are never reported missing and so do not even show up on statistics. Some want to disappear for one reason or another. All appear to end up emotionally and physically damaged. Who are these people and what drove them to embark on their disappearance? What gives in the lack of community that can allow this to happen?
This is a hard book to classify in terms of what kind of writing it is. Documentary? Autobiography? Journalism? Memoir? Expose? Critical Writing? Does it matter. O'Hagan's writing is as ever challenging and excellent and like the very best of writers he makes you think beyond, outside of the written text. I suppose the only other kind of book I can imagine coming close to this kind of work would be George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London. The same kind of intensity pervades the text. In the same way that those two books spoke, The Missing is about the dispossessed and the underclass, those that are easily overlooked by the mainstream because they live on the peripheries.
This is a dark book. A dark book that illuminates a dark side to what we have allowed society to become. What is 'home' and what drives people from it. Where are the Missing?
November 25, 2015
This was... not what I was expecting. I thought it would be a book about how and way people end up missing, but the first part was mainly about the author's family and childhood with a few very tentative links to the subject of people going "missing" (a grandfather who was lost at sea and a little boy who went missing from the author's childhood estate). There were a few interesting bits about the history of Glasgow, but mainly I wondered what the point was. The second part of the book was entitled "The Missing" and I thought it would start getting to the point then, but it didn't really. A large chunk of the second book was dedicated to the victims of Fred and Rosemary West, but still managed to only skirt the issue. Then he referenced a few conversations he'd had with homeless people, some of whom are officially missing.... and that was it. A disappointing book!
April 15, 2023
When I was 12 a girl who was in the same class as me at primary school disappeared. I often think about her. This is the book I wish I'd written in honour of her. For all the Laure Mezzasalmas who are missed and not missed, read this book. The thing that staggered me about this book is that Andrew O'Hagan wrote it in his 20s. I had to keep on reminding myself. Excellent excellent book.
May 2, 2025
(review will follow)
July 30, 2017
This was O’Hagan’s first book and unlike his later fiction works is a piece of investigative reporting.
It begins as a series of histories; of O’Hagan’s family, on both sides, of Glasgow’s troubles with sectarianism, of O’Hagan’s childhood, the Bible John murders, of Kilwinning and Irvine old (that of John Galt) and New, but transforms into a meditation on people who have gone missing; as a three year old boy and, later, a young woman of whom the only trace was her handbag, did during O’Hagan’s youth in Irvine to where his family had moved in the early days of the New Town’s construction. In the text he writes that he has, since childhood, fuelled by those two incidents in his home town, had a morbid fear of disappearing. Of that ongoing sectarianism O’Hagan says, “There’s sometimes too much pleasure, and too much social cohesion, involved in an ongoing mutual hatred for it to be surrendered just like that. In the absence of much else, of course, prejudice is just a form of tradition.” Which perhaps goes a long way to explaining sectarianism’s persistence.
In the book’s course O’Hagan meditates on the cruelties children perpetrate on one another when there are no adults around; with particular emphasis on an incident from his youth - when he was a joint perpetrator - and the James Bulger case (“There was something unhelpful about the way that case was discussed..... the two Scouse boys were called devils, treated as complete anomalies, and they were hounded outside the court by adults sick with the desire for retribution,”) before finally coming to the heart of his investigation, 25, Cromwell Street, Gloucester, by way of Fred West’s connections to Glasgow via his first wife, whose body, with those of her friend and daughter, was eventually dug up in the garden of West’s previous home in Much Marcle, Herefordshire. The last quarter of the book is taken up with West’s life and activities and the missing and, up till the discovery of their bodies, his seemingly unmissed, victims.
There are different ways to be a misper (as police jargon for missing persons has it.) Some people have reasons for going missing - and want to remain so. Many folk O’Hagan met in an occasional shelter, for drop-ins, fell into that category. He also notes an increasing category of missing who are simply unnoticed until their bodies are found in their homes months or years after their deaths.
While it is the thought and possible plight of missing persons that toll through the book it is the autobiographical details of O’Hagan’s family and early life which are the most immediate and memorable to the reader. (O’Hagan refers to going to school for the first time - in long trousers. Such a change there was in fifteen years or so; in my day such sartorial splendour was not sported until Secondary School.)
In the afterword to this 2004 edition O’Hagan writes that he opened the US publication of the book with the sentence, “We are none of us safe in this world,” and now does not wish to limit its “ominous tenor”. But surely that has always been true? We could fall under the proverbial bus - or cart as was. A close examination of the awful events that take place, of the lives cut short or compromised, will inevitably lead to such a sense of insecurity. Feeding and encouraging such thoughts is what fuels the tabloid press and right wing politicians eager to reduce freedoms for the populace and scrutiny of themselves. Perhaps O’Hagan’s journalistic endeavour has obscured to him a wider perspective. There is no such thing as absolute safety. And protection from threat – terrorist or otherwise – can never be complete. Yet notwithstanding what goes on today in the world - and the UK - my generation and that of my children are generally - and statistically - safer than those of my parents and grandparents. (This may not apply to the missing of course.)
It is a usually neglected yet necessary endeavour to reflect on and pay attention to people who are perhaps too easily forgotten and whose fate may or may not be grim. Even in this digital and camera-surveilled age it is possible to disappear, apparently without trace. The light O’Hagan shines on the problem is not sparing neither is it comfortable.
It begins as a series of histories; of O’Hagan’s family, on both sides, of Glasgow’s troubles with sectarianism, of O’Hagan’s childhood, the Bible John murders, of Kilwinning and Irvine old (that of John Galt) and New, but transforms into a meditation on people who have gone missing; as a three year old boy and, later, a young woman of whom the only trace was her handbag, did during O’Hagan’s youth in Irvine to where his family had moved in the early days of the New Town’s construction. In the text he writes that he has, since childhood, fuelled by those two incidents in his home town, had a morbid fear of disappearing. Of that ongoing sectarianism O’Hagan says, “There’s sometimes too much pleasure, and too much social cohesion, involved in an ongoing mutual hatred for it to be surrendered just like that. In the absence of much else, of course, prejudice is just a form of tradition.” Which perhaps goes a long way to explaining sectarianism’s persistence.
In the book’s course O’Hagan meditates on the cruelties children perpetrate on one another when there are no adults around; with particular emphasis on an incident from his youth - when he was a joint perpetrator - and the James Bulger case (“There was something unhelpful about the way that case was discussed..... the two Scouse boys were called devils, treated as complete anomalies, and they were hounded outside the court by adults sick with the desire for retribution,”) before finally coming to the heart of his investigation, 25, Cromwell Street, Gloucester, by way of Fred West’s connections to Glasgow via his first wife, whose body, with those of her friend and daughter, was eventually dug up in the garden of West’s previous home in Much Marcle, Herefordshire. The last quarter of the book is taken up with West’s life and activities and the missing and, up till the discovery of their bodies, his seemingly unmissed, victims.
There are different ways to be a misper (as police jargon for missing persons has it.) Some people have reasons for going missing - and want to remain so. Many folk O’Hagan met in an occasional shelter, for drop-ins, fell into that category. He also notes an increasing category of missing who are simply unnoticed until their bodies are found in their homes months or years after their deaths.
While it is the thought and possible plight of missing persons that toll through the book it is the autobiographical details of O’Hagan’s family and early life which are the most immediate and memorable to the reader. (O’Hagan refers to going to school for the first time - in long trousers. Such a change there was in fifteen years or so; in my day such sartorial splendour was not sported until Secondary School.)
In the afterword to this 2004 edition O’Hagan writes that he opened the US publication of the book with the sentence, “We are none of us safe in this world,” and now does not wish to limit its “ominous tenor”. But surely that has always been true? We could fall under the proverbial bus - or cart as was. A close examination of the awful events that take place, of the lives cut short or compromised, will inevitably lead to such a sense of insecurity. Feeding and encouraging such thoughts is what fuels the tabloid press and right wing politicians eager to reduce freedoms for the populace and scrutiny of themselves. Perhaps O’Hagan’s journalistic endeavour has obscured to him a wider perspective. There is no such thing as absolute safety. And protection from threat – terrorist or otherwise – can never be complete. Yet notwithstanding what goes on today in the world - and the UK - my generation and that of my children are generally - and statistically - safer than those of my parents and grandparents. (This may not apply to the missing of course.)
It is a usually neglected yet necessary endeavour to reflect on and pay attention to people who are perhaps too easily forgotten and whose fate may or may not be grim. Even in this digital and camera-surveilled age it is possible to disappear, apparently without trace. The light O’Hagan shines on the problem is not sparing neither is it comfortable.
August 21, 2015
An absorbing memoir and social commentary that manages to avoid the trappings of so-called 'tragic life real stories'. O'hagan prefers to focus on the lives of missing persons rather than details of gruesome killings or graphically portrayed abuse.
The overall effect is saddening and moving. He clearly highlights that in an increasingly transient world individuals (and their life stories) can easily fade from social consciousness.
The overall effect is saddening and moving. He clearly highlights that in an increasingly transient world individuals (and their life stories) can easily fade from social consciousness.
September 16, 2018
4.5 Stars!
“Those houses that had been built for us, those entire worlds, would grow increasingly less new; people would die in those houses where no one had died before, life would run out in the usual way, and layers of wallpaper would grow on the walls. We’d fill out our lives, and our jumpers, and in time would move away ourselves. But I’ll not forget the importance of those who did not those who stay frozen but undead in 1976. They are the missing.”
This book is crammed with some fascinating social history and we get a real flavour for the people, the places and the period they existed in. On the one hand we get some obscure history into the history of some Ayrshire towns like Irvine and Kilwinning and on the other hand we get some real penetrating background into the poverty ridden East End of Glasgow, which even today, more than a century later, still has a strong and proud Irish catholic presence and ancestry.
O’Hagan ties the wider history of Glasgow in with the history of his own relatives who lived there, a few generations deep and he pulls this off really well. He also talks about the likes of Peter Manuel, the last man to be legally executed in Glasgow, when he was hanged at Barlinnie Prison in July of 1958, and of course the infamous Bible John murders of the late 1960s. He also explores the long running consequences of the well-meaning yet deeply misguided social and housing policies implemented by David Gibson during the 1960s that gave rise to the many brutalist tower blocks, designed by the likes of Basil Spence, that have largely been demolished today.
“You might say that a certain amount of violence was accepted. And this was even more true of violence out in the street-organised violence- than of that taking place in people’s homes. A sense of some gangsters as surrogate guardians of their home patch’s welfare is still there today. It was common to feel that way, to see these little Caesars, these slashing bogey-men, these proto-Mafiosi, as ruthless hardmen, yes, but ones who had a certain concern for the values of the world they moved around in.”
O’Hagan then later goes onto cast his curious net further afield, meeting the homeless, missing and lost of London who has been drawn to the bright lights from all points of the compass. He also dedicates the final section of the book to examining the horrendous crimes of Fred West and some of his known victims. The style and approach of this book would later be used to great effect in his most recent book, “The Secret Life” which partly covers some of the same themes.
A named yet faceless fear haunts this book and O’Hagan builds a wicked atmosphere of spellbinding tension, wracked with creeping uncertainty. He manages to switch seamlessly between the chilling and the fascinating. He perfectly recaptures the wonder and the thrilling excitement of childhood exploration and the discovery of the new, whilst also focusing on the darkness on the edge of town, and the horror that can strike seemingly at any time.
O’Hagan maintains a measured tone of tender nostalgia mixed with deep tragedy throughout, that makes for wonderful reading. This book shares a lot in common with some other great Glaswegian biographies such as Ralph Glasser’s “Growing Up In The Gorbals” and Jimmy Boyle’s “A Sense of Freedom” as well as the likes of Nick Davies’ “Dark Heart” which also takes a look at the underworld of a largely maligned and forgotten Britain.
July 22, 2024
I enjoyed this book which I gorged on due to the subject matter and his analysis of the implications of the missing on society as a whole. I was on a bit of an AO’H Binge, having just read Caledonian Road and loved it . Reading reviews of this let me to his journalism and his articles about how the media reported the James Bolger case. I am planning to read his report on Grenfell and Julian Assange. I confess I am a True Crime junkie, and though I fee guilty about being distracted ( or entertained) by tales of others misery – there is something compelling about reading about lives so different from yours (but in your locality) and there is a comfort in finding how they were solved, though often they are not.
At the beginning I really didn’t get this book - It’s in two parts – part family history and memoir and part an analysis on the missing in our society – how it’s increased, managed by the police, who and why people go missing. It settles on the backstories of the girls found in Cromwell Road. The link between the two is fact that O'Hagan's grandfather was missing in action - which wasn’t that unusual, but he goes on to chronicle others who went missing from that area of Glasgow, including the poor women killed by ‘Bible John’ at the Barrowlands - It took me a while to get into the history of Glasgow , but it’s interesting how a society in flux camouflages some lives - the lives of the vulnerable, children and women. He leaps to the 60s and moving to a new town leaving the roughness of Glasgow behind, but he feels this violence is inherent and soon enough people go missing here too . I struggle to really empathise as nothing like this happened in my childhood so I’ve no experience of being part of a community that has suffered a tragedy (thankfully) so there is definitely a class aspect of this too as middle class lives are less ‘precarious’ than working class, though this is changing with a new generation of ‘precariat’ - though O’H doesn’t mention class specifically – practically all the cases cited here are from working class backgrounds.
The second part of the book begins with a missing child in Limehouse, summarises and how the police eventually set up missing persons specialists, the history of the Salvation Army and increasing phenomena of the council workers who have to try and trace friends and family when a body is found dead in a flat from natural causes – another forms of missing in plain site. He also visits Centrepoint and explains how they promise not to ask questions or seek ID from their young homeless clients who don’t want to be found. He doesn’t offer answers and it’s more an acknowledgement of the agony of the parents left behind and the randomness of their fate.
At the beginning I really didn’t get this book - It’s in two parts – part family history and memoir and part an analysis on the missing in our society – how it’s increased, managed by the police, who and why people go missing. It settles on the backstories of the girls found in Cromwell Road. The link between the two is fact that O'Hagan's grandfather was missing in action - which wasn’t that unusual, but he goes on to chronicle others who went missing from that area of Glasgow, including the poor women killed by ‘Bible John’ at the Barrowlands - It took me a while to get into the history of Glasgow , but it’s interesting how a society in flux camouflages some lives - the lives of the vulnerable, children and women. He leaps to the 60s and moving to a new town leaving the roughness of Glasgow behind, but he feels this violence is inherent and soon enough people go missing here too . I struggle to really empathise as nothing like this happened in my childhood so I’ve no experience of being part of a community that has suffered a tragedy (thankfully) so there is definitely a class aspect of this too as middle class lives are less ‘precarious’ than working class, though this is changing with a new generation of ‘precariat’ - though O’H doesn’t mention class specifically – practically all the cases cited here are from working class backgrounds.
The second part of the book begins with a missing child in Limehouse, summarises and how the police eventually set up missing persons specialists, the history of the Salvation Army and increasing phenomena of the council workers who have to try and trace friends and family when a body is found dead in a flat from natural causes – another forms of missing in plain site. He also visits Centrepoint and explains how they promise not to ask questions or seek ID from their young homeless clients who don’t want to be found. He doesn’t offer answers and it’s more an acknowledgement of the agony of the parents left behind and the randomness of their fate.
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January 18, 2025Having read The Fathers and gaining some serious respect for O’Hagans writing style; ethereal, poetic…I thought this first book of his was difficult. Losing a grandfather in WW2 is not the same as the victims of child abductions, and a lot of first parts of the book, esp the autobiographical part seems to imply that any Glaswegian kid has the potential to be a Fred West, I think, but I’m not sure. He recounts his own experience with missing children, and spends a lot of time drifting along on descriptive writing and on his feelings, and fails to describe much of the Missing, possibly because when it comes down to it, he didn’t know much about them. However, its a first book, bit clunky, but I think its going to stay with me. It’s shocking to learn that when he wrote this, every four days a child went missing, now in 2025 it’s every 45 minutes.
February 24, 2018
I love this book. it explores the idea of being missing as you might guess from the title. However it is a meditation rather than a logical exploration. It encompasses personal biography, psychogeography, crime reporting focussing on the victims rather than the criminal and much more. O'Hagan thinks about and around the concept of missing in an thoughtful and intelligent way which seems all the more relevant today when, with the omnipresence of technology, it would seem almost impossible to be missing.
July 15, 2017
A unique and fascinating book that has me pondering the nature of identity, self-hood, community and recognition. And a bonus a conjuring of 70s childhood. Recommended.
August 7, 2017
Another book brilliantly written by Andrew O'Hagan. Thought provoking and chilling. In a world where we are so busy being watched and watching there remain legions of the unmissed.
August 10, 2020
Well-intentioned but rather un-involving study of what it meant to be a missing person in 1990s Britain. He makes some good points, but it's too dry and academic
October 21, 2021
Compelling throughout and an absolute journey.
June 6, 2025
He's a good writer, no doubt, but I didn't realise it was a history of his family.
January 8, 2023
This book, part-memoir and part-true crime, really gripped me. It traces the author's interest in those who go missing, from the reason his family moved from Glasgow (where violence, and the disappearances of young women, made his parents look to raise their children somewhere safer), to disappearances which touched his childhood in Ayrshire, to his adult life as a journalist in England covering various missing cases and the murders of Fred and Rosemary West. I've read one of O'Hagan's fictional works, and it was interesting to read about his childhood and further back to the generations before him who lived in the East End of Glasgow. As a native of the West of Scotland myself, that appealed to me. But actually I think it would be an interesting read for those who aren't as familiar, as the sectarianism and the Bible John murders - particularly in O'Hagan's telling - are intriguing. This is not a salacious book, and I really appreciated how O'Hagan focuses on the victims and those left behind. Particularly where those missing have been victims of violent crime, he gives them their names and talks about their lives rather than their demises - he doesn't even use the name Bible John, and his discussion on the Wests is focused far more on those who they abused. He is compassionate and introspective in the telling, and I think that's what made this feel very human.
November 16, 2007
Part memoir, part social commentary, this book is about missing people in Great Britain. It's a bit dated because it was written before the internet came into widespread use, but much of what it says still applies. The book is not about specific cases so much as the phenomenon in general. O'Hagan, a journalist, interviewed runaways and homeless people in addition to law enforcement officials as part of his research. Much of what he says, especially about the people who die and are left undiscovered in their apartments for months, makes for very depressing reading. This book is well worth the time to look at and fostered greater awareness in myself, although I knew a great deal about missing people already.
August 23, 2016
105. The Missing by Andrew O'Hagan. An examination of the concept of missing, trying to disappear and trying to find someone. He talks about his grandfather who was lost at sea during World War II, and continuing sense of loss in the family decades later. He also discusses the disappearance of a young boy in his neighbourhood, the murder of Jamie Bulger by two preteen boys and the women killed and disposed of by Fred and Rosemary West. Some of this has particular resonance for the Canadian reader: the Pickton murders, the missing and murdered aboriginal women and the CBC radio podcast, Someone Must Know Something about the disappearance of a child in the Kawarthas, who disappeared without a trace. While there is no plot, it is gripping.
October 13, 2012
This a most interesting book on many levels... it covers every aspect of missing people from missing them to them being missing. It is a book which has stayed in my mind since I first read it... and things staying in your mind is an aspect of O'Hagan's book; and as a demonstration of the point he makes, I had misremembered the content, or remembered it in a different way, creating my own version in my head. I don't think I've explained this very well, but read the book and you will understand what I'm getting at!
The book ranges from 19th century Glasgow, to the dreadful murders by Fred and Rosemary West... and much in between about O'Hagan's own childhood.
A fascinating read.
The book ranges from 19th century Glasgow, to the dreadful murders by Fred and Rosemary West... and much in between about O'Hagan's own childhood.
A fascinating read.
February 23, 2013
The first part of the book is about the author's childhood in Glasgow (with occasional references to people going missing); the second part is about people who have gone missing - this is done in a very 'brief' way and the subjects aren't given much depth. The book seemed a bit aimless to me with no real point - I don't understand what the author was trying to achieve in writing the book. The largest part on one particular subject is the Fred & Rose West murders but if you want to read about this subject properly I would recommend the Gordon Burn book 'Happy like Murderers'.
October 19, 2016
This is a brave book in an original voice. O'Hagan travels deep into the lost places of our dystopia, searching for the many who no longer belong. Makes me think of the opening lines of Dante's Inferno: "Midway through the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood, where the right path was wholly lost and gone." Only here O'Hagan's guides are grieving parents, disappeared kids, forgotten elders, drugged out runaways, and his own burdened conscience. This isn't a call to action, it's a deeply personal meditation, and a dirge.
June 13, 2011
Very well done. I loved the way it was both a journalistic investigation into missing persons as well as a personal exploration of why they matter to the author. I liked the shifts in time and place, and the real sense that we are learning and engaging more with the subject just as O'Hagan does. I liked too the slight overlaps with the talk of Glasgow buildings he dealt with in 'Our Fathers' - it reinforced the sense of his honesty and authenticity as a writer.
September 11, 2025
O'Hagan always writes well, but I didn't find the theme of memoir meets crime that compelling. His idea of boys' childhood inevitably involving vandalism, trespass and theft is certainly a million miles from my own experience.
(Addendum: I asked a couple of male friends at a dinner party and both of them admitted in childhood to shoplifting, breaking into & vandalizing unoccupied buildings, and smashing people's greenhouse windows. They explained this as due to peer pressure.)
(Addendum: I asked a couple of male friends at a dinner party and both of them admitted in childhood to shoplifting, breaking into & vandalizing unoccupied buildings, and smashing people's greenhouse windows. They explained this as due to peer pressure.)
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March 29, 2015An interesting concept--loosely exploring people who go missing, disappear, are murdered, or are lost--but a little remote-feeling to read today, as it was written in the early 1990s and takes place in northern England and Ireland.
April 12, 2009
Had to force myself to get through this one. The writing just seemed very flat and rambling, my mind kept drifting off...then suddenly I was at the end, and relieved.
January 12, 2014
Particularly fascinating to read about the area of Glasgow in which I now live.
January 31, 2016
This is probably the best book by O'Hagan.
July 25, 2008
interesting, disturbing, well written and incredibly overlooked here in the states
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews