Book Review: Songs for the Missing

SONGS FOR THE MISSING
Author: Stewart O'Nan

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (October 30, 2008) 
Language: English 
ISBN-10: 067002032X 
ISBN-13: 978-0670020324

SUMMARY

"It was the summer of her Chevette, of J.P., and letting her hair grow." It is also the summer when, without warning, college-bound Kim Larsen disappears from her quiet Lake Erie town. Her parents, her sister, her best friends and her new boyfriend now much do everything to find her. 
As time passes and local search parties give way to wider TV appearances, private investigations unearth dirty secrets. We follow those closest to Kim as they struggle to maintain hope and, finally, as the news cameras turn away, to hang on to both her and themselves. Stark and honest, this is an intimate account of what happens behind and beyond the headlines when those who stay after the media leaves deal with the real consequences of a very American tragedy.

(Jacket blurb)


REVIEW

Kim is the 18-year-old I never was; she has a car, a crappy job, a beach to spend nights on and a river to swim in with her friends. Alright, I had one of those. The reader is not given much time to get to know the character of Kim and yet her absence is felt once she disappears off the page. This might be the most skillful stroke of the author's hand.

Overall, the characters in this novel left me wanting something more. Each one existed in their own sphere and while they bumped into each other they never truly interacted. So tethered were they to their linear character profile that I couldn't help missing the human element. There were times when I felt lost between the characters, since the focus shifts between them sporadically and I often had to read back to make sure I was following the right plot line. In following Kim's family, I was surprised that I couldn't feel for their loss, the mother, in throwing herself into the media circus and organizing all the awareness campaigns vanishes into her own media persona. Overall, the moments that aimed to forge that sympathetic bond with the reader were so far outside the plot that they didn't make sense to me. It was as if they were tacked on because there was some requirement for a "familial intimacy" moment.

As for the plot, it rolled along and it concluded. If I can commend the author for one thing it would be how he managed to induce those same feelings of frustration, emptiness, anger and hope in the reader which would have been felt by the people experiencing such a loss. He does this without the use of empty moments which remind the reader what to feel, but rather by the pace of the plot and the knowledge he chooses to give to the reader. At the end I, like the characters, just wanted the ordeal to be over; I wanted closure. Frustratingly, the author doesn't give the reader much of that, and one is left with a vague hunger for something more, as if a pile of bones unearthed two years later could yield a stronger sensation.

Overall, the book was engaging, though not enthralling and certainly not captivating. I found that the author spent too much time explaining why the characters performed certain actions rather than leaving it open to the reader's interpretation. I appreciate it when the author gives the reader some credit. After being dragged along by thread after thread I wish it could have been a better ride. The book had its moments and while I would not disregard it completely,  I wouldn't enthusiastically recommend it.