Missing - Softcover

Alison Moore

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178463140X ISBN 13: 9781784631406

Publisher: Salt, 2018

Synopsis

Having moved from the Fens to the Midlands to the Scottish Borders, Jessie Noon finds herself struggling to leave the past behind.

Following a family tragedy, Jessie Noon moved from the Fens to the Midlands and now lives in the Scottish Borders with a cat, a dog and – she is convinced – a ghost in the spare room. Her husband walked out almost a year ago, leaving a note written in steam on the bathroom mirror, and Jessie hasn’t seen her son for years. When Jessie meets Robert, a local outreach worker, they are drawn to one another and begin a relationship; meanwhile, Jessie has begun receiving messages telling her I’m on my way home.

As a translator, Jessie worries over what seems like the terrible responsibility of choosing the right words. It isn’t exactly a matter of life and death, said her husband, but Jessie knows otherwise. This is a novel about communication and miscommunication and lives hanging in the balance (a child going missing, a boy in a coma, an unborn baby), occupying the fine line between life and death, between existing and not existing.

About this title

Review:

She is both gifted stylist and talented creator of a new English grotesque.

Author: Isabel Berwick Source: Financial Times

Book of the day Dense, complex, thought-provoking, it manages to be at once a fairytale and a philosophical treatise, high-octane thriller and literary interrogation. Like the dreams that haunt Bonnie’s night-times, it holds its secrets close, and repays careful rereading. The end of the novel, abrupt and death-haunted, feels as neat and tight as a key in a lock, and sheds light on the mysteries that have gone before.

Author: Sarah Crown Source: The Guardian

Moore is a serious talent. There’s art here. There’s care.

Author: Sam Leith Source: Financial Times

He Wants will easily be one of my books of the year... He Wants left me feeling both completely uplifted and utterly devastated, all at once.

Author: Simon Savidge Source: Savidge Reads

Alison Moore is very good on modern alienation... She doesn’t so much lay bare a life as shine blinding pinpricks into its darkest corners.

Author: Claire Allfree Source: Metro

Death and the Seaside is a psychologically astute novel of power, control and influence which will make you wonder how real your memories are and where your fears come from. Blending layers of memory and imagination there are signposts to the end everywhere, if you only know where to look. Clever and really quite disturbing.

Author: Mel Mitchell Source: New Books

About the Author:

Alison Moore's first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Awards (New Writer of the Year), winning the McKitterick Prize. Both The Lighthouse and her second novel, He Wants, were Observer Books of the Year. Her short fiction has been included in Best British Short Stories and Best British Horror anthologies, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra and collected in The Pre-War House and Other Stories. Born in Manchester in 1971, she lives near Nottingham with her husband Dan and son Arthur.

About this edition

• Publisher: Salt
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 178463140X
• ISBN 13: 9781784631406
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192