From Publishers Weekly
Journalist Lynn revamps the classic conceit of the disappearing wife with some Manhattan-Peruvian suspense in her polished, rather chilly first novel. David, a travel editor, and Jessica, a teacher, are an early-30s married couple of privileged background living in New York City, whose desire for children and inability to conceive expose some deep-seated stress in their marriage. David is nonchalant about his secure place in the world (he's an ex-club kid whose sinecure at
Travel Excursions magazine masks his serious journalistic intentions), while Jessica is increasingly troubled by the emptiness of their lives. Then Jessica disappears, seemingly of her own accord, despite the suspicious chain of serial rapes in the neighborhood. In alternating sections, Lynn fills in the story of the couple's marriage, beginning with their honeymoon in Peru, where David gets wind of a missing American businessman trekker and sends Jessica back to New York so he can chase the story. Four years later, when Jessica disappears, the American trekker in Peru is spotted again, linked to a radical leftist guerrilla group. David again races to pursue the elusive details, uncovering merely a false trail and a tantalizing metaphor for the fate of his own wife. Lynn's structure is elegant and her characters are hip if rather vapid and self-serving; the problem is the novel's glib tone, which nullifies any sympathy the reader might have for its protagonists. Jessica's malaise is too generic to be affecting ("This isn't the life I was meant for, this isn't all there is"), and thus her disappearance seems like any other fashionable gesture by her set, not to be taken seriously.
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In this assured debut novel, a Manhattan couple decides to infuse their lives with meaning by having a child. David hangs out in the middle of the masthead at a middlebrow magazine while Jessica teaches school, but after several failed fertility treatments, they focus on clearing hurdles in the adoption process. And then one day, Jessica vanishes, her keys left on the counter, a bedroom window ajar. There's a rapist loose in the neighborhood, but he hasn't killed any of his known victims. So without evidence of a crime, the detached David and Jessica's increasingly desperate mother must come to grips with the jarring disappearance in their own way and time. David does so by revisiting the story of a U.S. businessman gone missing in Peru--the one real scoop of his career, which he landed on his honeymoon. Although Jessica is more plot device than compelling character, Lynn deftly employs David's journey to explore how someone might rediscover his internal compass when he no longer has any reason to lie to himself.
Frank SennettCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
