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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Far from harmless,
This review is from: The Missing World (Hardcover)
What a strange piece of luck a snowy night in north London is for Jonathan, the deeply obsessive lover in Margot Livesey's "The Missing World." A car skids and knocks down Hazel, his estranged girlfriend. He finds her almost comatose and rushes her to hospital. Lo and behold, by the time she regains consciousness, days later, she has completely forgotten how utterly she loathed the man-and the good reasons she had for her loathing. "A new beginning." he thinks and whisks her back home again. Hazel continues to suffer debilitating seizures and Jonathan envelops her in suffocating solicitude. She is grateful, but the reader knows she's in for a rough passage.So begins a keenly heard, beautifully crafted, but ultimately very odd novel. Livesey has been compared to Patricia Highsmith, but to me, the better match would be Jane Smiley. The story unfolds with such frank and cheery ordinariness and stays always within bounds of trendy, but entirely plausible behavior. Yet surreal and menacing strains appear almost at once. In a common suspense novel, guns might be drawn to create drama or characters might be threatened by tough-guy hoodlums. In "The Missing World," Charlotte, an out-of-work actress, finds herself abruptly chucked onto the street by a fickle sister. To Livesey's enduring credit, being homeless in winter London is made every bit as frightening as a set of brass knuckles. But the central vulnerability continues to be beautiful Hazel. Turn by turn, we follow two characters who become drawn into her needy arc. Freddie the roofer finds himself newly energized by a desire to save her. Charlotte is willing to help, but wants to save herself. There are passages of breathtaking treachery and a net seems to draw tight. Ultimately, we get a climax of mild action and escape. But then the lens draws back and we realize that perhaps we don't yet understand this novel after all. In a way, this novel might itself be a sort of seizure. It arises mysteriously and releases storms of energy. Thoroughly eccentric, but completely convincing characters are drawn into brief constellation. Meaningless rituals are enacted with total conviction. And at the heart of the obsession are the bees, humming and rubbing in their winter hive. Finally, just as mysteriously, the events exhaust themselves and the novel, quite literally, collapses onto a couch. Or perhaps the parallel is "Midsummer Night's Dream," which is quoted at several points. "Missing World" has similar viscous jealousies and transporting slumbers. Characters make fools of themselves for love. Ultimately, they awaken and can recall neither the love nor the peril. Only a sense of loss and longing remains. The result is comic, but far from harmless
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Second Chances Gone Awry,
By Kerry Madden "Kerry Madden" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Missing World (Hardcover)
The brilliant idea behind this novel is the idea of "second chances" to right the wrongs one has committed, and who doesn't want to get a second chance tossed his or her way once in a while? So I began this book somehow pulling for Jonathan who is hoping to make ammends after the disasterous breakup with his girlfriend Hazel - who P.S. - has amnesia after an accident and can't remember that they are finished. Then Margot Livesey so deftly and eerily twists the story, and the character of Jonathan is gradually unpeeled, layer after layer, until we want to leap into the pages to rescue Hazel. The other characters surrounding Hazel and Jonathan are just as fascinating and disturbing, one of my favorites being Charlotte, an out-of-work actress with a magnificent heart that gets trampled upon constantly, whether it's by her unforgiving sister, Nurse Bernie, or her louse of a boyfriend. The Missing World really is a stunning read and quite impossible to put down.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an intricate, moving novel,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Missing World (Hardcover)
I found THE MISSING WORLD extraordinary for how it renders the complexity of its characters, their deep flaws and deep yearnings, while never backing up and passing judgment on them. By shifting points of view, Margot Livesey allows us to keep seeing the world of this novel from multiple vantage points; the results are at once gripping and psychologically complex. The novel explores memory and repression, the way people can manipulate each other, the blindness of both love and hatred--all while being an unbelievably engrossing read.
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