Customer Reviews

The Moment She Was Gone : A Novel

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As a psychiatrist with forty years experience, I was awe-struck by the impressive insight shown in this novel by veteran writer Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain). He demonstrates extraordinary awareness of the almost unbearable difficulties that the loving families of severely mentally ill persons often endure. His focus is purposely on the response of the family, not the inner experience of the sick family member, and this aspect of this all-too-common situation has received scant attention in fiction.

The narrator of the book is the twin brother of a young woman whose erratic behavior has been written off as merely eccentric for years until she is placed in an Italian hospital during an 'episode,' as it's referred to, and his and the family's initially grudging recognition of the extent of her illness. The narrator himself finds that he has powerful resistance to accepting the validity of her diagnosis. I hesitate to say more for fear I will spoil the suspense that Hunter so carefully sets up in his tersely written novel, but suspect you will not be able to put this book down once you've started it.

I have intense admiration for Hunter's ability to describe what I have seen so many times in my own practice. I have repeatedly observed the kinds of self-protective distortions and myths that grow up in families about the ill family member, defenses that usually finally have to give way to crushing reality. I've so often seen the emotional price they pay trying to help their loved one. Hunter writes about this with compassion and understanding.

I would also recommend a recent non-fiction account with a similar theme: "The Outsider: A Journey into My Father's Struggle with Madness" by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer, also available here at Amazon.

Scott Morrison

I think the bad reviews are coming from readers already familiar with the popular novels of Evan Hunter/Ed McBain. If you want the 87th Precinct, this ain't it.

But what it IS is brilliant. The book deals with some very real (and hard to like) characters dealing with mental illness, which seems to run in the family, based on the way all the characters act. It's dark, emotional, and frankly scary - to contemplate the horror of living with a loved one dealing with this illness.

It's such a departure from most of his body of work that I was amazed that he had this sort of book in him. My recommendation is to read this as if it were written by a new novelist you've never heard of, and only if you enjoy dark, emotional writing that investigates the complex undercurrents of a dysfunctional family. This is NOT cheerful stuff. But it's amazingly real, at least to me. I've known people like this, and the author NAILS their personalities.

I also strongly recommend the audio version of this book - narrator Dan Futterman does an amazing job of capturing the stilted voices and mannerisms of this uptight, denial-ridden family.

It's a pity this book is being panned like this, but I'm convinced it's because the readers wanted more of the "same old same old" from Hunter. He definitely did not deliver that. But for readers willing to explore a dark, challenging topic in a story filled with some very flawed but very human characters, I recommend this highly.

I agree is one of the other reviewers. If you're looking for the Evan Hunter of decades past, don't read this book. You'll be disappointed. However, if you're interested is a powerful story of mental illness and denial, then buy The Moment She Was Gone and read it. I have long been a fan of Evan Hunter. The Moment She Was Gone is a fitting departure from his normal work. I applaud him for having the courage of a different vision.
I was easily able to identify with most of the characters in this novel. That is a testament of Mr. Hunters ability to tell a story and develope characters that are interesting and believable. Buy this book and read it. A great weekend read.

I've been a fan of Ed McBain's for years, but haven't read an Evan Hunter book since I read Blackboard Jungle 20 years ago. Recently I read Candyland, which Mr Hunter created as a collaboration between his two persona. And to my surprise, I found I enjoyed the Hunter half better.

So when I saw his latest I picked it up. And I was not disappointed. Mr Hunter delves into the dilemma of a family dealing with a relative suffering a mental illness. But they refuse to see it. I finished the book in a day, because I just couldn't put it down.

Criminal Conversation by Evan Hunter is one of my favorite novels and in this book he shows the same writing and characterization that made me want to keep reading.

Annie is a bit crazy, and it is obvious to the reader. Unfortunately, no one in Annie's family has the guts to deal with it, except maybe her twin brother Andy from whom some details of Annie's past have been hidden to protect him.

Each story of Annie's past provides possible clues as to why she is crazy and each story reveals a bit about all the main characters as they all struggle in the present to find where Annie has ran off to this time.

Basically this novel is about Annie's family coming to terms with her craziness, and that covers about 208 pages. I believe Hunter could have added to this novel to make it better. This novel would have been a lot better if there had been a resolution to why Annie was crazy. Hunter definitely has the skill to throw in a plot twist about something dramatic in Annie's past that caused her to go insane, but he leaves us with a story of several people's lives and the book ends with them continuing to live. There really is no climax. I guess Hunter has earned the right to write whatever he chooses, but that still doesn't change the fact that this bare-bones novel could have been much better.

Evan Hunter who also writes thriller-dillers under the name Ed McBain is a pro at creating compelling scenarios. Dan Futterman, whom many applauded as Robin Williams's son in "The Bird Cage," is also a master of his craft, as is evident in his assured reading of this tale of emotional dysfunction

When Andrew Gulliver receives a predawn phone call from his mother telling him that his twin sister, Annie, is missing it is not the first time. As a teenager Annie had disappeared without a trace, only to later reappear just as surprisingly as she had vanished. This was a pattern that she continued through adulthood.

Much of her story is told in flashbacks, as her various odysseys to far off places are recounted. However, just a short while ago Annie was restrained in a mental hospital in Sicily where she was given various drug treatments which seemed to exacerbate her illness rather than control it. She is diagnosed as being schizophrenic.

One of the questions that crosses Andrew's mind as he searches for his sister is whether or not he, too, may be mentally ill. Has their family played a part in his sister's dysfunction?

The Gullivers must face their past and what may be their future during this traumatic time. Hunter writes with perception and compassion of people riven by emotional illness...

I checked this book out on the basis of the author having written "Blackboard Jungle." I was not disappointed. Hunter, in spare, cogent style, offers a sensitive, realistic view of a condition difficult for families to face. The author covers various family member reactions such as denying, ennabling and defying.

Mr. Hunter won me over for the umpteenth time with this one, given that I've been reading - and loving - for a good thirty years the work of this extraordinary author, both as Evan Hunter and as Ed McBain (I pride myself about not having skipped any title whatsoever in McBain's own nearly fifty-year-old 87th Precinct police procedural series, a never ending stream of genial and inventive writing which has been ripped off by virtually anyone, especially TV shows, without ever achieving results which can be remotely compared to its original brilliance).

The first Evan Hunter novel I ever read was Second Ending (1956), and it greatly affected my teenage years. I read it and re-read it so many times that my old paperback copy is by now nearly destroyed. The latest Hunter to grace my bookshelves is, of course, this melancholic, somewhat elegiac and yet achingly realistic-feeling gem, The Moment She Was Gone. I caught some intriguing analogies between these two Hunter masterpieces.

Both novels show us the deep sufferings of frail young people - in Second Ending it was twentysomething heroin addict/former brilliant jazz musician Andy Silvera; now it's thirtysomething schizophrenic/former brilliant student Annie Gulliver.

Both novels offer riveting and layered portrayals of a badly damaged yet sensitive person, once full of promises, caught in the titanic struggle of coping with the very essence of his/her sufferings as well as with the nostalgia for a past which can't return. Then again, we actually see all of that mainly through the eyes of a sort of chorus (Andy's friends there, Annie's family here), and especially through the eyes of the one single person (Bud Donato there, Annie's twin, Andy, here) whose soul is closest than anyone else's to the suffering, struggling one.

In both novels the result is staggeringly beautiful, and also - in the end - powerfully cathartic. At the end of their (and our own) respective emotional journeys, we find that our "guides" - Bud Donato there, Andy Gulliver here - have grown dramatically, becoming better beings, more open-minded ones, more understanding ones, and they have to thank for that none other than their "flawed" loved ones. This is a beautiful concept.

What also strikes me in The Moment She Was Gone is Evan Hunter's uncanny ability to faithfully - yet emotionally - portray the life of a schizophrenic person's family like it actually is in reality.
I've known two girls who were exactly like Annie Gulliver. One, the sister of a male schoolmate of mine, committed suicide many years ago, in her early twenties, by jumping out of a window. It wasn't her first suicide attempt. She was an incredibly brilliant student, just like her brother, my friend.
The other girl is luckily alive, even though for years she refused to take her medications and transformed her mother's life into a permanent nightmare; she was a former classmate of my sister, and she had what everyone initially defined just "an artistic streak" - she made jewelry just like Annie Gulliver did, she wrote poems, she was also as beautiful as an angel ...

I saw these two girls closely mirrored in Annie Gulliver's struggle with her own inner voices, as well as I saw their families closely mirrored in Andy Gulliver, his mother, his brother Aaron, his sister-in-law Augusta ...

Evan Hunter delivers here a perfect blend of realism, craft and - most of all - overwhelming humanity. A must-read, and five stars out of five.

"The Moment She Was Gone" is a drama written by Evan Hunter who writes wonderful police procedurals under the name Ed McBain. Andy Gulliver receives a phone call from his mother informing him that his twin sister Annie has disappeared, again. In fact Annie had disappeared many times before. While in Italy she had been held in a mental hospital where she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Andy searches for the truth that will help him find his sister. This novel grabbed me from the first page and kept me turning pages until I reached the end. I have read over 60 novels by Evan Hunter/Ed McBain and every time I know that I am reading a work by a literary master. "The Moment She Was Gone" is highly recommended.

I'd been after this book for ages, and I finally got my hands on it (on honeymoon, no less), I found it almost impossible to put down. As a confirmed Ed McBain fan, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but unlike what one of the other reviewers says below, this book is filled with characters that seem more 'real' and 'human' - I defy anyone with a shred of emotion or empathy not to care about what happens to the characters Mr Hunter creates here.
I've read most McBain novels, and a lot of Hunter novels. To my mind, this is the best Hunter novel...ever - I found it more affecting and much harder to put down than "The Blackboard Jungle", which is the book Hunter is most well known for to most people.
I simply can't recommend this book highly enough. Isn't there a ranking better than 5 stars??