Una Mannion’s debut novel is A Crooked Tree.
Her new novel, Tell Me What I Am, is due out in the US in August 2023.
At the Guardian Mannion tagged ten books about missing persons -- "interrupted stories, in fiction and real life, [that] are powerfully moving and key into a universal anxiety." One title on the list:
Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’NanRead about the other entries on the list.
In the summer of 2005, 18-year-old Kim Larsen vanishes on her way to work. Her Chevette is found several days later in a nearbytown. O’Nan resists generic expectations, sidelining the thriller elements to offer a compassionate portrait of a family afraid to give up in the face of tragedy. Narrated alternately by Kim’s mother, father and 15-year-old sister, O’Nan shows us a different kind of procedural: endless waiting, spending nights on websites as her sister does, or taking pills to fall into unconsciousness like her mother. Perhaps the most devastating character is the father, desperately driving up and down highways distributing flyers, trying to keep his daughter in the public mind.
The Page 69 Test: Songs for the Missing.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
