AND THEN SHE WAS GONE, by Lisa Jewell (Reviewed Audible Version) Anthony Ventre

 

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.