Modern Lit: Songs for the Missing, by Stewart O’Nan

I’ve had the pleasure of reading this ARC thanks to Barnes & Noble Books, author Stewart O’Nan, and publisher Viking Penguin. It is due for release October 30, 2008.

I’m also reviewing Songs for the Missing for The ARC Reading Challenge, here:

http://teddyrose.blogspot.com/2008/06/arc-reading-challenge.html

Echoes

Just weeks from leaving for college, Kim feels herself on the brink of an exciting new life. Like most teens, she keeps secrets from her parents, but she’s a good kid. Then, one summer day, she vanishes. She’s simply gone.

Songs for the Missing is less about Kim herself than about those destined to struggle in the aftermath of her disappearance. Told from the varying perspectives of her mother, father, and younger sister, and her boyfriend and two best friends, the narrative takes the reader through their reactions at different points of the story, which covers a period of two years. Their thoughts and feelings, actions and dilemmas, coping strategies and attempts to move forward in their own lives, are clearly delineated, evolving with time. Some of these elements they all share, while each individual also has his/her idiosyncratic reactions. At the heart of the story, however, are Kim’s parents, who are very different in their endeavors to find their daughter while they fight to survive the overwhelming nature of their loss and their fears.

Ultimately, this somber, powerful novel leaves more questions unanswered than resolved. To explicate here would be to spoil the story. But Songs is a beautifully expressed journey that takes the reader partway through the nightmare of losing a child, a sister, a friend. “Closure”, a word bandied about by the media, is a specious term when applied to these situations, for how can one ever truly put this sort of catastrophe behind them?

Highly recommended.