tl;dr

Alison Moore’s gift is talking us gently along a painful, uncomfortable journey.

opening remarks

I’ve meant to read Alison Moore since she published her first novel, Lighthouse, back in 2012 (it was shortlisted for a Man Booker).  But I’m lazy and forgetful, and so it’s taken six years and the publication of two more novels and a collection for me to finally get my arse into gear and pick-up her latest novel, Missing.

knee-jerk observations

Jessie, our protagonist, is a cheery sort.

This happens to my ears!  Except with me it’s wax, and I don’t use oil, like Jessie, but instead have my Doctor wash the offending muck out with a horse syringe.  
In a lovely bit of prose, Jessie imagines a dinner party with her eight great-great-grandmothers.
This is the first mention of a child named Paul who I’m going to guess is Jessie’s son from her first marriage.  I have a terrible feeling about Paul.  (As I will discover later, my instincts were justified but misplaced).
I do love that the name of Jessie’s dog is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Oh, thank God, Paul isn’t dead.  I was worried this would end up being a dead baby novel.  I’m mean Paul has issues with his parents, but I’m glad he’s alive.  (And yet, the relief that this isn’t a “dead baby novel” doesn’t entirely replace the sense that something awful has happened, something that Jessie is circling, at least to this point of the novel).

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a novel where the author is a translator of fiction (although since writing that Ian Sales recommended The Translator by Leila Aboulela).  This excerpt, about the success (or lack thereof) of a novella Jessie has recently translated, does encapsulate the book’s melancholy, downbeat tone.
Many people hold the same opinion about Lost.  I loved the finale.

The Gist Of It

Very little happens for a good two-thirds of Missing.  We follow our protagonist, Jessie, as she attends a translation and interpretation conference in London, travels on public transport, and feeds her cat and dog.  At one point she meets a bloke named Robert and they become a couple for a time.  There’s an aimlessness to it all, even Jessie’s belief that there’s a ghost living in her spare room reads more like a personality quirk than an actual haunting.

And yet Missing is an engrossing, affecting novel.  It’s a book that deliberately plays against expectations.  The title and the cover (the word Missing enigmatically daubed on a steamy mirror) suggests a psychological thriller, but for a chunk of the narrative the only person who goes astray is Jessie’s husband, and even he sends cryptic postcards as to his whereabouts.  It’s not until the last third of the book that we discover who went missing and while it’s not a jaw-dropping surprise, it’s still a punch in the guts.  Jessie’s isolation, aimlessness, even her muted relationship with Roger (and the disappearance of her husband) all make a tragic sort of sense.

Missing is a book soaked in memory.  Whether it’s riding the bus or feeding the dog every action triggers a remembrance in Jessie.  None of them – at least to begin with – are about the event that’s brought her to Scotland, away from (but still in touch with) her family.  And yet, around the edges, these memories do hint at something not quite right, a sense of dislocation and deep unhappiness.  Jessie begins the novel alone; she ends the novel alone. Her interactions with others, including Roger and her next door neighbour’s son, end poorly as if she’s not entirely in tune with the world around her.  And yet there’s a glimmer of hope, a possibility of renewal in the final paragraphs of the book. If that reads like a spoiler, it isn’t.  The haunting, memory-laden quality of Missing needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated.  Alison Moore’s gift is talking us gently along a painful, uncomfortable journey.

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