AND THEN SHE WAS GONE
I finished listening to the audio version of Lisa Jewell’s “And Then She was Gone.” It’s a full 10 ½ hours of
mostly pleasurable listening. Mostly pleasant because it’s a dark story
of a child kidnapping.
I got the book in
audible form from our local library. Some
tribute must be paid to Helen Dunn, the actor/reader who was awesome in rendering of the principal characters. I’ve never been tuned into that business of
‘voicing’ different characters and didn’t realize that one single reader/actor
was doing all the characters. When I
found out a single person was doing all the voices, I’m like ‘duh’, how is that
possible?
Just about every novel
has soft spots. I prefer my fiction to
be realistic, a contradiction in terms, I know. But how
convincing is the writer? How true to
life are the events depicted? If a writer requires too much of me in the way of
suspending my sense of reality, I fall out of the magic bubble of imagination.
The plot of “And Then She Was Gone” requires the reader to
believe that the female perpetrator was capable of artificially inseminating a
kidnapped teen. You’re supposed to believe the kidnapper could
have accomplished this with semen bought over the internet and a drug store
syringe. There is no description of the procedure
in vivo so the author apparently found the scene impossible to write convincingly.
One problem with credulity is not enough to make me quit
reading. The whole of this story was very good. Ingenious, vibrant dialogue, realistic
characters, surprises all along the way.
There are rules in
fiction but there are no rules in fiction. Yes, another contradiction. The
novel begins in a third party omniscient POV but often switches into a
first-person narrative. Shakespeare did that long ago and it’s become accepted
practice. The direct appeal of the character
to the reader is effectively done here.
In the audible version especially, they sound real. The net effect is that you’re drawn into the stories
each character tells. There are charming
frauds like Floyd who becomes a clueless accessory to the crime. You feel for the mom and principal protagonist
Lauren as her story tugs at your heart, not with violins and harps, but with a
steady drumbeat of weirdness.
Other significant characters are Lauren’s estranged husband
Paul, her alienated daughter Hannah, and gone girl herself, Ellie. I can’t
forget Noelle, the hardened Irish maven who fronts well but haunts even
better. Each of these characters is
well-drawn and vibrant; however a most conspicuous and bizarre personage is the
precocious Poppy, a ten year old going on forty, as her father says.
You can’t wrong with this intriguing and intricately
woven plot and cast of characters, most
of them dinged up if not permanently dented. “And Then She Was Gone” is a strong genre
mystery with an insightful and often disturbing psychological edge. As an aspiring
writer, I learned from it.
