Songs for the Missing: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Stewart O'Nan (Author)
Key Phrases: sea wolves, Father John, Dairy Queen, Stewart O'Nan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. O'Nan proves that uncertainty can be the worst punishment of all in this unflinching look at an unraveling family. In the small town of Kingsville, Ohio, 18-year-old Kim Larsen—popular and bound for college in the fall—disappears on her way to work one afternoon. Not until the next morning do her parents, Ed and Fran, and 15-year-old sister, Lindsay, realize Kim is missing. The lead detective on the case tells the Larsens that since Kim is an adult, she could, if the police find her, ask that the police not disclose her location to her parents. When Kim's car later turns up in nearby Sandusky, Ed, desperate to help, joins the official search. Meanwhile, Fran stays home putting all her energy into community fund-raisers, and Lindsay struggles to maintain a normal life. Through shifting points of view, chiefly those of the shell-shocked parents and the moody Lindsay, O'Nan raises the suspense while conveying the sheer torture of what it's like not to know what has happened to a loved one. When—if ever—do you stop looking? 6-city author tour. (Nov.)
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From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Ron Charles Stewart O'Nan is a daredevil minimalist, an ardent student of the things people do in between the exciting things other authors write about. In his most recent novel, Last Night of the Lobster, he described the final 10 hours of a Red Lobster restaurant in a Connecticut shopping mall. A fire? A gunman? Legionnaire's disease? No, just budget cuts handed down from the main office. The cooks, waitresses and manager all know what's coming, and so do we. It's a story practically allergic to suspense, but the sensitivity of O'Nan's voice makes it strangely compelling. Now, 12 months later, his new novel, Songs for the Missing, seems like a sellout. The first chapter sets up a classic thriller premise, strewn with ominous clues: A pretty 18-year-old girl named Kim Larsen leaves her friends at the beach and drives to her part-time job at a gas station. She never arrives. That night her parents notice she hasn't come home. They call her classmates. They call the hospital. They call the police. We know how this should play out: the accrual of alarming details, mixed with a few false leads; growing suspicion that the devoted father/mother/sister/dog is hiding something; a horrific vision of the crime from the victim's or the murderer's point of view; and finally a shocking revelation. But O'Nan ignores all these conventions in favor of an approach so mundane you can't believe it works, the thriller equivalent of watching blood dry. He's a connoisseur of waiting, and it's his discipline, his refusal to deviate even for a single sentence from the uneventful, dull terror of losing a child, that makes Songs of the Missing so troubling. Kim's disappearance is at the heart of this novel, but its real concern is with her family members. They have no way of knowing if they're dealing with a simple misunderstanding, an act of teenage rebellion or a capital crime. Even starting the search in earnest seems to Kim's parents like a horrible admission of disaster, but when the initial round of phone calls yields nothing, her father, Ed, feels impelled to do something, get in his car and find her. "They would all laugh at him later, he imagined, Dad freaking out, driving around like a maniac. That was fine with him, as long as she was all right. He didn't expect to see anything." O'Nan follows the trajectory of Ed's panicked thoughts with quiet sympathy: "He'd felt helpless at times in his life, over money troubles most recently, or, more often, the unhappiness of a loved one. This was different. His usually reliable talents of hustle and attention to detail were worthless against the unknown, and he was frightened." Kim's mother, Fran, is equally afraid, but she reacts differently. As a nurse, "she honored calmness above all, trusting efficiency over emotion." Most of the novel focuses on the mechanics of their search, which Fran pursues with unwavering self-control, an astute study in the way men and women respond to crisis. "The feeling of uselessness nagged" at Ed, but Fran throws herself into these exhausting routines, if only to forestall a descent into madness. "There was a logical order to their panic," Fran thinks. "Every failure led to the next step." Here once again, O'Nan proves himself the patron saint of labor. These frantic parents have so much to do besides worry: assembling lists of names to contact; canvassing the town with posters; organizing hundreds of volunteers for grid-by-grid searches; staging a "Kare-a-Van for Kim"; ordering buttons, T-shirts and balloons; and trolling through thousands of leads that pour in from witnesses, cranks, psychics and well-wishers. And there are Web sites to monitor and daily blog entries to post -- a whole industry of grieving parents pedaling scraps of hope to each other around the country. More depressing is O'Nan's clear-eyed portrayal of the media and their double-edged role in these tragedies. "The networks were hungry for missing girl stories," he writes. Fran realizes early that her daughter's disappearance needs to be marketed to get what she wants: maximum exposure as quickly as possible. Even while terrified by thoughts of what might have happened, she must carefully choose the right clothing ("A white blouse would turn into a blob of light" on TV) and train herself to deliver an appropriate appeal. "You don't want to come off as hysterical," a friend advises. "You don't want to be too cool either. . . . It's like advertising." Kim's sister is pushed into the glare of publicity, too: "You're like a celebrity," a well-meaning classmate tells her. Stripped of drama, here is the whole tedious, humiliating, heart-rending work of searching for a loved one. What holds our attention through all this is O'Nan's careful focus on the minds of shaken family members trapped in a task that consumes their lives and their livelihood. "It was how they told time," O'Nan writes. "They'd picked up the awkward yardstick used by new parents. . . . They counted backwards, snagged on that last day." Forced to go through the motions of hope long after real hope has drained away, they eventually reach that unspeakable place of just wishing it were all over. Ed "no longer looked forward to anything," O'Nan writes. "Pretending to be interested took a constant effort. When he was by himself, he went slack." In scene after scene, these spare descriptions will make you catch your breath. Some are just frozen moments: Fran sitting in her daughter's car in the garage, "both hands on the wheel, as if she was actually going somewhere." Others are masterfully designed sequences: Fran shopping all day for Christmas presents, determined to get her missing daughter just the right thing. In the end, Kim's family receives neither the resolution they hoped for nor the one they feared. The world that O'Nan captures thwarts our expectations for cathartic tragedy or gleeful celebration, which makes the story even more devastating. This isn't the nightmare of losing your daughter; this is the numbing reality of it.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (October 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067002032X
• ISBN-13: 978-0670020324
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #54,802 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How sudden loss affects a family, September 2, 2008

By	C. Anderson - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Meet Kim Larsen. She is eighteen years old, pretty and popular, and about a month away from leaving for college and the wider world. She can hardly wait. Like most small town kids, she and her friends chafe from the sameness and boredom of daily life. They drink more than they should and experiment a bit with drugs. But they are good kids at heart and are so looking forward to going away, being on their own, growing up.

Then, somewhere in the short distance between her home and her workplace, she seemingly vanishes into thin air. No trace of her, or her car. No one has seen anything. She's just gone. This is the story of those left behind. The author changes the point of view for each chapter and the reader feels the reaction of each person: Mom, Dad, sister, best friend, boyfriend. We see how they react and try to cope with the reality of Kim's loss.

Her Mom Fran gets organized, makes lists, makes calls, starts a website, talks to the press.

Her Dad Ed gets outside, taking the lead in the numerous searches that start immediately and continue for months.

Her younger sister Lindsay retreats into herself, a book, her I-Pod, the tv, the computer. Anything to keep people away. Especially her parents who can't resist the impulse to smother their remaining child with protectiveness. More than anyone else, this is her story.

Young girls disappear every day, not only in the US but around the world. Many are never seen again and their fates are often never known. Songs for the Missing gives you a glimpse of the flattening anguish and grief that the loved ones suffer when this happens.

Despite the emotional subject matter, this book is a surprisingly easy read. The author's smooth and comfortable style allow the reader to sink into the story, empathize with the characters, be a member of that family. Stewart O'Nan is a talented writer who has written a book that will resonate long after you finish it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tough Topic - Well Done, November 9, 2008

By	Eclectic Booklover (New England) - See all my reviews

What would do if your teen aged daughter disappeared without a trace? When--if ever--do you stop looking for her?

This is exactly what happens to Kim Larsen, age 18, popular, a small town Ohio girl just weeks before she is to leave for college. She spends an afternoon at the lake with her friends then never shows up for work that evening and is never seen again. It is not until the next morning that her parents, and 15 year old sister, realize Kim is missing.

The book starts out like a mystery, but it soon becomes very much a character study about how people act when a family is in crisis. When one person keeps themselves busy and involved every minute of the day, others may turn inward and shut the world out. What if normal grieving? Is there such a thing? Do remaining family members grow closer or more distant in times of crisis such as this. These are the questions I found myself thinking about as I read this book.

I expected that this book would be more of a mystery. So initially I was a bit disappointed, but it still was very very well written, and I am not sorry that I read it.

O'Nan is a really good author, and even when his books are not necessarily what you might have expected, I have always found them enjoyable.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Feels very real, February 16, 2009

By	z hayes (plano,texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Reading "Songs for the Missing" wasn't easy, in fact it was excruciating - the subject matter centering on a young girl's disappearance and the effect on her family, friends and community is heartrending and it was painful to read about these people coping with their loss and grief.

When 18-year-old Kim Larsen disappears from her small Ohio town of Kingsville, her family, friends and community are mobilized to quick action. But then time passes, and those close to Kim realise they need to make a conscientious attempt at getting back to a semblance of normality - her parents, her sister [who finds herself being overshadowed by her beautiful, popular sister even when she's missing], Kim's boyfriend, friends etc - the book basically follows what happens to people when someone they know goes missing, with no real resolution.

This is not a traditional thriller or crime procedural - there's not a set of clues that helps one determine Kim's fate. On the contrary, it's a searing narrative with characters that are very real and who try to put their lives together despite a great tragedy.