Nobody is Ever Missing
Catherine Lacey
[Granta]
Catherine Lacey’s debut novel, Nobody is Ever Missing, follows narrator Elyria’s abrupt departure from her stable but unhappy married life in New York to travel around New Zealand, a country with which she has only the most tenuous connection. It is compulsive reading. Elyria leaves New York almost on a whim, without telling anyone and without any real plan. She walks, hitchhikes, sleeps rough and occasionally works for room and board, but never for long. Elyria’s sheer aimlessness and vulnerability, not to mention her precarious mental state, lend the novel a compelling sense of urgency.
The subject matter offers a comparison with Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, but everything Flynn gets wrong with that novel Lacey gets right here. Flynn’s novel took the runaway wife trope and turned her into a caricature, an evil-genius psycho-bitch. Lacey’s take is infinitely more understated, compassionate and skilful. It’s clear from the outset that Elyria is attempting to flee from something deep within herself. Her desire to become missing from her own life is effectively an extended existential crisis and Lacey allows Elyria’s labyrinthine thought processes to dominate the narrative. Elyria knows that she is a woman on the edge, but she doesn’t know how to escape the precipice, and nor does she really want to.
Words: Anna Grace Scullion
