Customer Reviews

No One You Know (Random House Reader's Circle)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Toward the end of this incredibly moving literary mystery, the storyteller - and Ellie is a storyteller; narrator is far too sterile a word for what is going on here - comes to the realization that stories aren't set in stone. I don't know if that is a universal truth, provable to the irrefutable certainty demanded by the mathematician characters in No One You Know, but it is clearly true about the story told in these wonderful pages. This one is set in something far richer: fertile literary soil that is at times dark, at times funny, at times heartbreaking, and, at every step, lyrical.

I've been a been reader of literary fiction for more years than I care to admit, and a reader of mysteries for even longer than that, and still no novel comes to mind that, for me, combines the best of both these worlds so elegantly.

In this novel of stories told and received, retold and unwound, Ellie's search for the truth about the unsolved murder of Lila, her brilliant mathematician sister, is a lovely study of passion, family, loss, and love. It left me thinking about so many things: How we love and why we fear loving. How we define ourselves and those around us, or leave those tasks to others. How important passion is to the work we choose to do. How often untruths told with confidence are received as truths, and how difficult it is to peel back the edges to get a peek behind widely accepted untruths. How much damage we sometimes do to others when we are over-focused on ourselves.

No One You Know is a book I will be putting in the hands of every intelligent reader I know!

Over at the Barnes & Noble First Look Book Club discussion of Stewart O'Nan's Songs for the Missing, quite a few people, including me, said they would have liked to have seen the book written from the first person perspective of the younger daughter Lindsay. I had that in mind when I read No One You Know because both books deal with a family coming to terms with the loss of an elder daughter. In the case of No One You Know, the elder daughter is Lila, a math genius, and the story is told by her sister Ellie 20 years after the tragic event.

"A story has no beginning or end. Arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead," Author Richmond writes. Ellie's life has been shaped by her sister's unsolved murder, and the "true crime" account of it written by a professor, Andrew Thorpe, she once intimately trusted. That book revealed Lila's math professor and secret married lover as the perp. But Ellie begins to question everything she thought was true when a chance meeting in an unlikely place yields Lila's notebook that she used to jot down mathematical equations, leading her on a search to discover what really happened that fateful night.


I read an ARC of this novel which describes the book like this: "A riveting family drama about the stories we tell - a novel of astonishing depth and beauty, at once heartbreaking, provocative, and impossible to put down." Jacket copy often exaggerates, but in this case I wholeheartedly agree with it. I will go out and buy a copy of this for my "keeper" bookshelf and I fully expect that this will appear on my year-end best list. Let me tell you why.


The narrative is very much about how little twists of fate can alter our life stories. For example, if Ellie had let Lila take the car that Wednesday, she might still be alive, Ellie's parents might still be together, Ellie might be married and have kids by now. Stories and the endless variations of storytelling are themes in counterpoint with the very strict and exact nature of mathematics. I loved how all the pieces of the story fit together in the end like a perfect mathematical proof.


Thorpe once said in one of the classed Ellie attended that "in order for a book to be really good, it's not enough to develop the major characters. The minor ones, too, have to be distinct. When readers close the book, they should remember everyone who walks across the page." I do.


There is a smattering of mathematical talk that went way over my head, but I still found it fascinating. Ellie also has a very interesting job. Due to her great sense of smell, she works as a coffee cupper, looking for great coffee beans all over the world. And despite what some other reviewers have said, I enjoyed learning more about coffee.


Extremely highly recommended!

Read more of my reviews at presentinglenore.blogspot.com

No One You Know is a mystery and family drama with several layers. The primary story focuses on the narrator, Ellie, and how the murder of her genious sister Lila twenty years ago, has shaped her life and relationships. Intertwined with the story of the murder, is Ellie's current relationships with family, friends, work, etc. A significant part of Ellie's story is her past and present relationship with Andrew Thorpe, a teacher and "friend" who published a book about Ellie's sister's murder, which launched a career in true crime fiction. The chapters weave the past and present together as Ellie learns more about her sister Lila and the circumstances surrounding her mysterious death. This was the first book I read by Michelle Richmond, and I can't wait to read her previous novel, The Year of the Fog. Richmond's descriptive narratives of both the physical surrondings and her charachter's emotional states are worth a few re-reads. I found myself re-reading chapters at a time, just to be sure I had the whole picture and didn't miss a thing. Richmond's story and vivid descriptions of anything from coffee to math, to the mysterious and haunting death of a loved one, will not soon be forgotten!!!

Twenty years ago Lila, Ellie Enderlin's sister disappeared, only to turn up a few days later died. Who would want to hurt Lila? Lila was a top math student at Stanford. Ellie obtains in her possession a notebook belonging to her sister that is filled with tons of mathematcial equations. Ellie is now on the hunt to solve the puzzle and Lila's murderer.

Along the way Ellie meets a man by the name of Andrew Thorpe. He is curious about Lila's unsolved murder and asks Ellie questions. The next thing Ellie knows, Andrew is writing a book about Lila titled "Murder by the Bay".

This is my first book by Michelle Richmond. I thought it was a good one. The only thing I had with it was at first it confused me a little when Ellie would flash back to the past and than the present, otherwise I liked how the story line came together. I thought I had the killer figured out but I was wrong. You won't belive who the murderer is and what his relationship is to Lila.

Based on a good review, I purchased this book and read it. Wow! It's a mystery, it's literary, it's accessible but not slick, and it's very realistic and thought-provoking. I say this even though it was fairly easy for me to spot the murderer early in the novel. I even marked the page that gave it away. But that didn't spoil the book for me, and as it turns out, although I was right, I was also wrong. I've given this book to friends who have also remarked on how good it is, and they've passed it on to their friends.

The words are lovely, dark, and deep . . . (with apologies to Robert Frost.) That just popped into my head as the best way to describe this book.

Although the plots are quite different, No One You Know shares several similarities with Richmond's previous book, The Year of Fog, and I rated it 5 stars for many of the same reasons. I can't decide which I liked best - both are outstanding.

In both books, a woman who is closely involved in a case that the authorities have given up on, tries to solve it herself. In The Year of Fog it is the kidnapping of her fiancé's daughter; here it is the murder of the woman's sister. Yet neither of these books really fit well into the usual mystery genré format. Both are focused more on the psychology of the characters than on detective work or action/adventure. Richmond is a genius at showing us how profoundly, and in what complex ways, the crimes affect the characters and all of their relationships. This is one of the things that give her works such richness and make them stand out way above the crowd. "Literary mysteries" is a good term for them.

The other thing that makes them so special is the science that Richmond weaves tightly into the plot. In The Year of Fog it was the study of memory; here it is mathematics. If you think mathematics sounds dry and boring, think again! No One You Know proves how amazingly fascinating and deeply mysterious it can be. And there is also some really interesting information about the coffee industry, especially how buyers select the beans (fragrance is the key - it requires a highly specialized "nose" just like in the wine and perfume industries.)

Yet there is one thing that Richmond's books share with the best of the more typical mysteries, and that is the high level suspense. You can't tear yourself away until you find out the answer (literally - I read each of the books in one sitting.) And in No One You Know, the answer is quite a surprise - and a deeply satisfying, unexpectedly gentle, and fitting one, too.

There was another surprise, a small and charming one, in a humble and very subtle reference to The Year of Fog, in which the main character talks about "a novel that I'd read recently, a sort of literary mystery about a kidnapping in San Francisco. The book had been interesting, if somewhat drawn out. Halfway through I started skipping long passages on memory and guilt just to get to the meat of the story." I love it! (Although I disagree. I thought those passages on memory and guilt were some of best parts of The Year of Fog.)

I can't wait to read Michelle Richmond's next book. And I hope it will include a reference to No One You Know. I wonder what she will say about it?

A sister's quest to find out the truth behind the murder of her sister ends with self discovery and revelations about the nature of relationships between loved ones. How well do you really know your family? Are they keeping secrets from you? What truths are revealed simply by living together and being related?

Twenty years after the fact, Ellie Enderlin is haunted by the death of her reticent and secretive older sister, mathematical genius and Stanford prodigy, Lila. In the aftermath of the shocking murder, Ellie turns to a former English professor who fashions her memories and pain into a bestselling true crime novel -- and exposes Lila's married lover and colleague, Peter, as the suspected killer. Ellie is embarrassed and upset by the book and not satisfied with the fact that justice has not been served and Peter never convicted.

Ellie, unable to settle down, travels the world as a coffee buyer when she runs into Peter in a coffee shop where he gives her Lila's notebook. As she reads the notes, she starts to investigate her sister's past life to try to find out the truth about her sister's death. Who murdered Lila, and why? She follows a very thin line of clues, each interview leading her closer to the truth that has eluded her. The answer surprises Ellie and brings about a certain kind of closure.

Full of math terms, equations, proofs, and tidbits, the book sometimes reads like a text but there is a certain type of poetic beauty in the narrative even with all the scientific prose. The story is both a mystery and a literary work that will keep the reader turning the pages until the satisfying conclusion.

Recommend.

Ellie Enderlin is a professional coffee buyer whose life is influenced by one event: the murder of her sister Lila twenty years earlier. After a chance encounter during a coffee buying trip, Ellie decides to conduct her own investigation into Lila's death, which was never officially solved. However, doing so forces her to confront the truth of her family, her relationship with her sister, and her own isolation. Complicating matters is Ellie's own guilt for unwittingly contributing to a true crime book written about her sister's murder, which has unduly influenced Ellie's own thinking about the event. Although this description might make the book sound like a straightforward "by the books" thriller, it really is more than that. Although Ellie does conduct her own investigation (as only people in novels seem to do), the book deals with the complicated emotions surrounding the murder of a loved one as much as it does with the "whodunit" aspect. I thought this elevated the book above your standard mystery/thriller, and Richmond does a great job of working in little details about coffee, math, music and writing that add interest to the story. Most of all, Richmond does a wonderful job making Ellie a fully rounded character, which is so often lacking in books of this ilk. The book is a solid and satisfying read, and I would recommend it without reservation. An added little bonus in my edition was the author's No One You Know playlist, which includes songs either referenced in the book or that capture its spirit and setting. I think Michelle Richmond has pretty good taste in music!

Excerpt: Lila was like an unfinished novel--two hundred pages in, just when you're really getting into the story, you realize the rest never got written. You'll never know how the story ended. Instead, you're left with an abrupt and unsatisfying non-end, all the threads of the plot hanging loose.

Rating: 4 stars

This book is quite eloquent, beautifully written. The narrator is fantastically real, flawed, wounded yet determined, a real heroine in my estimation.

Ellie's life is turned upside when her sister Lila disappears and then is discovered dead in the woods. Everything she thought was sound and whole in her life is broken and hollow. Her parents ofcourse are devastated and in their grief, they lose the part of their relationship that had once held them together.

Ellie is left alone. Her sister dead, she is unsure of how to define herself. If she isn't Lila's younger sister, who is she?

They do not arrest anyone for Lila's murder. A friend and confidant of Ellie's, whom she admires and respects, the one person who allowed her to release all her fears and memories of her sister betrays her by writing a true crime novel about the murder and their lives. Her sister Lila, a person who was private, reserved, and felt safe in that privacy is now a source of amusement, intrigue and amazement for anyone who picks up the book and many do, as the book becomes a best seller and gives the author a different life, one he'd dreamed of, but had never been close to, until Ellie.

After a woman tells Ellie that the book reveals the killer, Ellie picks it up and reads it. She internalizes it and it becomes a very defining moment, as she is questioning who she is without Lila and here is this book, giving her that answer.

This novel explores Ellie's life, and it also gives you a glimpse into what becamse of the man that was accused in the true crime book of Lila's murder. I think it is a poignant and relevant look into the OTHER side of true crime novels. Readers gobble them up with excitement, murder, the gore of crime scene photos. REAL people! Wow! But what about those that lived it?? They are REAL too, the survivors are real, the accused are REAL. The consequences of books like this have never been explored in such an beautiful way.

I think this book shines and I would recommend it.

For more than twenty years, Ellie Enderlin has lived in the shadow of her sister's murder. Before that, her life was overshadowed by Lila, her brilliant mathematical genius of a sister.

Lila always knew her path - one that included a professional quest for proof of mathematical theorems. Ellie floundered, unsure of her direction.

In the months following the murder, Ellie turned to someone she considered a friend - Andrew Thorpe, an English professor and a great listener - only to find herself betrayed when he turned her confidences into a novel that became a bestseller. In the novel, he named one of
Lila's colleagues (and her lover) as the murderer. However, the police had never arrested anyone for the murder.

Pursuing her own career now as a professional coffee buyer, Ellie's work takes her to far-flung places, including Nicaragua, and it is here that she first sees Peter McConnell, a self-imposed recluse who has escaped the prying eyes of those who have read about him in the book - "Murder By the Bay" - and also to distance himself from the tragedy of a life cut
short.

Conversing with him, Ellie learns that Lila had left behind a notebook, one that she always carried with her. It included many of her mathematical equations.

When Ellie also comes to question that Peter McConnell actually committed the crime, she begins a quest - one that leads her back to San Francisco and surrounding areas, meeting and interviewing and finally arriving at her own conclusions about what happened.

Will Ellie find the truth? Will the mathematical equations Lila sought to prove finally reach realization? And what will Ellie rediscover about her relationship with her sister and about her own somewhat superficial connections to others?

This tale is much more than a crime novel - it is a story of life interrupted. Not just the life of the murdered girl, but the sister left behind, whose own connections with her sister were severed by another person's actions. It is also a story of betrayal, secrets and, finally, a peaceful resolution.

Like Richmond's previous novel The Year of Fog (Bantam Discovery), this story, No One You Know, is gripping and compulsively readable.