The Missing Person [Hardcover]

Alix Ohlin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2005

A powerful debut set in New Mexico over a long hot summer of surprises and discoveries.

Lynn Fleming happily abandoned dusty Albuquerque to study art history in New York, but when her younger brother disappears she reluctantly answers their mother’s summons and returns home. Although she soon finds Wylie among the eco-warriors for whom he’s a philosopher king, she begins to realize how much else is still missing. Her memories of her late cherished father are compromised by her mother’s relationship with a married man. And her fascination with two paintings her father left behind leads her to question everything she’d believed about her parents’ marriage and, by extension, her own behavior. Meanwhile, her attempt to regain Wylie’s affection is unsettled by her affair with one of his cohorts, even as the pranks they play–in order to protect the landscape they see being violated all around them–grow increasingly serious and then spiral out of control, putting everyone at risk.

A story of homecoming and coming-of-age, of convictions shaken and regained, of unspeakable loss and hard-won reconciliation, The Missing Person is funny and piercing throughout, a brilliant beginning to a bright new career.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although the title makes this sound like a mystery, it is a knowing and witty take on family ties, the politics of art and academia, and eco-terrorism. When art history graduate student Lynn Fleming finds out that Wylie, her younger brother, is missing—or at least hasn't been heard from and can't be located—Lynn returns home to Albuquerque to try to find him. Since she left to go to school in New York, she has become a confirmed New Yorker, and the thought of Albuquerque, "the capital of nowhere," makes her shudder, though she reluctantly appreciates Duke City's "scruffy charm." When someone in Albuquerque tells her, "I don't know anybody like you," she "almost choked in exasperation. New York, I wanted to say, was full of people exactly like me." Lynn finds Wylie easily and, in the process, strikes up a romance with Angus, one of Wylie's partners in eco-crime, a sunny and charming plumber whose darker side is gradually revealed. As the schemes of the group Angus leads get riskier and more dangerous, Lynn finds herself becoming involved with their actions and sympathizing with their philosophy, but not their methods or zeal. An interesting subplot about a Mew Mexican woman artist, whose work becomes fodder for Lynn's doctoral dissertation, is woven believably into the narrative. This promising debut is intelligent, insightful and often bitterly funny. Agent, Amy Williams at Collins McCormick. (May 6)
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From Booklist

In Ohlin's mischievously smart and highly entertaining debut, a family struggles to realign itself around the negative space created by the unexpected death of the charmingly dissolute narrator's scientist father. Lynn fled Albuquerque to study art history in New York, but things aren't going too well. So when her obsessively neat travel-agent mother calls, worried sick over Lynn's brother, Wylie, Lynn agrees to come home for the summer, unaware of how bizarre things are. Lynn's mother is openly involved with a man whose wife is suffering a curiously stylish form of mental disability. Wylie, dismayed by Albuquerque's sprawl and wasteful water consumption, has hooked up with a group of dumpster-diving eco-warriors, including a sexy, nihilistic plumber, with whom Lynn gets erotically involved. She also happens upon the work of an unknown woman artist whose tragic story may save her floundering academic career. Electric with unusual and sharply delineated characters, madcap yet purposeful misadventures, ready irony, and incisive ecological insights, Ohlin's lithe and intriguing tragicomedy reveals the vulnerability of both the psyche and the earth. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (May 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375415246
• ISBN-13: 978-0375415241
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,949,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars strong family drama, May 4, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Missing Person (Hardcover)

Three years ago Lynn Fleming left Albuquerque to study art history as a graduate student in New York. Her mom notices her scorn towards her dusty hometown as if Brooklyn and Manhattan are the world. Mom is concerned that her son Wylie cut off his phone and refuses to talk to her. Mom, a travel agent, informs her not listening daughter that she booked a flight for her via Minneapolis to come home to talk sense into Wylie who has been abducted by eco-freaks.

Knowing her research grant is gone and her affair with her married faculty advisor finished though he offers a final Paris fling, Lynn returns to Albuquerque. Finding her younger brother proves easy. Wylie's eco-criminal crony Angus and Lynn begin an affair as she is attracted to his upbeat charm until she begins seeing a dangerous side to her lover as she becomes involved with the risky actions of Wylie's eco-terrorist group. She even makes progress on her dissertation when she finds two works left by her late father painted by a 1970s local artist Eva Kent who has tragic ties to her parents.

THE MISSING PERSON is a well written character study as much as a mystery that hooks the audience the moment mom refuses to take no as an answer from her daughter. Lynn holds the tale together several intriguing subplots converge through her as she struggles with the past that seems to have imposed a will on her present and immediate future. Don't let the title fool you, this is not an amateur sleuth investigation, but instead a must read bittersweet tale for fans who appreciate a strong family drama.

Harriet Klausner

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Enjoyable Read, August 29, 2005

By 

RHA - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Missing Person (Hardcover)

Alix Ohlin's THE MISSING PERSON is narrated by a plucky, poised, highly intelligent graduate student, Lynn Fleming. Lynn's knack for telling story and her wry humor kept me turning pages. She leaves NYC and her lover, a married professor, for her hometown, Albuquerque, to search for her brother, who is involved with an ecoterrorism group. One of the ecoterrorists becomes her new lover, and finding her brother is easy, but bonding with her brother proves difficult. Even as characters and situations get wacky, Ohlin remains confidently in control, and she serves up powerful climactic revelations and epiphanies. An enjoyable read.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, June 19, 2005

By 

Matthew B "MB" (Hollywood CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Missing Person (Hardcover)

Incredibly witty, soulful, a great debut novel all around. A friend recommended this and it was really spectacular.