Catherine Lacey

Abruptly abandoning her unfulfilling life, an increasingly unstable woman flees to New Zealand and tests fate by hitchhiking, sleeping in public areas and involving herself with strangers while obsessing about her sister's death and hiding a growing rage. Original. 15,000 first printing.

A Novel

Nobody Is Ever Missing

azliana aziz

'You place a baby the same way you place a blame: put it down slowly--- after careful deliberation--- of where to place it--- and cradle the head--- and mind the neck.'

Once in a while you read books that completely wrecked you, left you in utter devastation and yes this book is one of that.

This is a tough read that I have to carefully pace my reading. By writing short chapters the writer somehow brilliantly masking the heaviness of this book through and through. I really understand why this is really not for everyone as evidenced by the ratings and divisive reviews nor the book will be high in my recommendation list to someone because it is not a comforting and pretty read (albeit some very beautiful poetic layered writings) + really there's not much for plots but personally this is my kind of read that let me sink deeper into the book and just feel everything. The very stream of consciousness of the prose and the long winded sentences can be major turn off for some but I love these aspects as it read as an authentic thoughts of what it would be like to live with depression and the chances of living in the narrator's head. I respect Catherine Lacey for going so intensely and bravely in writing Elyria and I will 100% read her next ones.

Lynn

The prose and writing in this has a certain quality to it. Some feelings and statements were very apt in their description of the human condition. However, this book feels very heavy. It is depressing and lonely and a feel-bad book in every sense of the word. I imagine this makes depressed people feel very understood, but I wouldn’t recommend this regardless of that. Character-driven with barely any plot and no resounding ending, it’s just an oath to anxiety that did not float my boat. At all.

Without telling her family, Elyria takes a one-way flight to New Zealand, abruptly leaving her stable life in Manhattan, her home, her career and her loving husband. As the people she has left behind scramble to figure out what has happened to her, Elyria embarks on a hitchhiker's odyssey, testing fate by travelling in the cars of overly kind women and deeply strange men, tacitly being swept into the lives of strangers, and sleeping in fields, forests, and public parks. As she journeys from Wellington to Picton, Takaka, Kaikoura and onwards she asks herself, what is it that I am missing? How can a person be missing? Full of mordant humour and uncanny insights, Nobody Is Ever Missing is a startling tale of love, loss, and the dangers encountered in the search for self-knowledge. It is a novel which goes far beyond the story of a physical journey and asks what it means to be human, to be a woman, and to be at the mercy of forces beyond one's own control.

Nobody Is Ever Missing A Novel

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