Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance
A Novel
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4.2 • 124 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and The Chicago Tribune
“Heartbreaking and funny, often in the same sentence—a deeply felt, finely wrought, and highly satisfying novel. Alison Espach has created a family whose every sorrow, joy, and idiosyncrasy is utterly, vibrantly real.”—New York Times bestselling author Claire Lombardo
For much of her life, Sally Holt has been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally’s questions about life, about love, and about Billy Barnes, a rising senior and local basketball star who mans the concession stand at the town pool. The girls have been fascinated by Billy ever since he jumped off the roof in elementary school, but Billy has never shown much interest in them until the summer before Sally begins eighth grade. By then, their mutual infatuation with Billy is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. Sally spends much of that summer at the pool, watching in confusion and excitement as her sister falls deeper in love with Billy—until a tragedy leaves Sally’s life forever intertwined with his.
Opening in the early nineties and charting almost two decades of shared history and missed connections, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is both a breathtaking love story about two broken people who are unexplainably, inconveniently drawn to each other and a wryly astute coming-of-age tale brimming with unexpected moments of joy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young woman addresses her older sister, who died when they were teens, in Espach's inventive and powerful latest (after The Adults). Sally Holt, now 28, continues to find her life shaped by sister Kathy's absence, prompting her to recount her life story, here unfolded in second-person narration. As a child, Sally is the subject of family concern because of her shyness, while Kathy, three years older, is comfortable in the spotlight and praised for her beauty. Despite the sisters' contrasting temperaments, they are each other's closest confidantes as they grow up in 1990s small-town Connecticut. Of particular interest to them both is high school senior Billy Barnes—a dreamy basketball player and the son of the town florist—who is in the grade above Kathy. After Billy saves 13-year-old Sally from drowning at the public pool, he begins dating Kathy, to Sally's fascination and envy. A car accident involving all three teenagers permanently shifts the Holt family dynamic ("To sue for reckless driving or not to sue? That was the question," Sally narrates, describing the tension between her parents over what to do about Billy, who was behind the wheel). In the aftermath, Billy and Sally unite in their shared grief and guilt. Espach captures the minutiae of love and loss with unflinching clarity and profound compassion, and pulls off the second-person point of view unusually well. Readers will be deeply moved.
Customer Reviews
Too Angsty for Me
I was bored half way through. Once the characters were established, everything that followed was simply a rehash of the theme. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a sibling, but I don’t think wanting the book to be over already is the emotion the author wanted to evince.
Lost the plot midway through
I loved the relationship between the two sisters, Kathy and Sally. I adored how Sally wanted to emulate her older sister, Kathy and everything she did. Kathy was lovely including her sister in all the teenage angst and drama but moreover what it’s like to fall in love with your crush you’ve had for years. A horrific accident takes place, Kathy dies and Sally continues on writing and speaking to Kathy as if she’s one day to read all these notes and give her advice. The largest dilemma is Sally and Billy falling in love yet her parents loathe Billy, even he is filled with shame and guilt and while he is wholly in love with Sally he decided to join a seminary and become a friar, he tells Sally this after they made love for the first time. Sally left for Europe the following day and years pass when Sally finds out the Billy isn’t in fact a friar, he is the owner of the flower and garden shop in town, the same one his father had passionately grew into his own successful business. Sally is in shock, and as luck would have it she is engaged to a lawyer Ray who she has told her sister, in the notes she’s been writing in about her life addressed to Kathy about everything that’s happened since she has died, she tells her friend Valerie that their sex life is lacking and when her parents are prepping for a hurricane, ironically named Kathy, Sally asks for Billy’s help to cut down some trees. She worried about how her parents would receive him but it seems that seeing one another decades later in such a domestic and familiar situation that they invite him to stay for dinner, it’s incredibly easy and all are overjoyed and the door bell rings it’s Ray who has noticed Billy is in love with Sally so she admits that they fell in love after her sister died and Ray thinks they’re still in love. He falls asleep and Billy calls and tells her to come outside the hurricane is on them full bore and they are laughing and billy says he loves her she responds she loves him back. The storm stops and she says that they are in the eye of the storm and reverts back to talking to her sister asking her if she can see her and Billy and then it picks up again and they wake uo and it’s the next day. They have pancakes yet she never says if Billy is still there or where she slept the night before it just ends. The middle of the story when she was segueing from HS into college and the years thereafter she’d really kind of lost the plot and if was a whole lot of info that wasn’t interesting nor had it felt it was necessary or relevant to how the beginning and half way into middle had been leaning up to and the very end was sugar sweet with her parents forgiving Billy and the 4 of them having dinner together. Why she didn’t omit all the irrelevant stuff in middle to ending and fill her readers into more of what happens after the dinner and how she Ray end up or if she and Billy follow through on their love - it would’ve been a lot more interesting and felt more genuine as well as seamlessly connected to the pre accident , after accident as teenagers and college students and where they go from the time she learns he is expanding his fathers business to the moment her parents have him for dinner.its extremely hard for me to think that Sally who was so intensely in love with Billy and he in love with her that neither found the other for Billy to let her know he didn’t go to seminary school and was now owner of his dads garden and tree center and that Sally wouldn’t have found him had she been given the time to- she’s known for her resources and the depth of her knowledge for the internet so it’s very difficult to believe she just walked away from him and never even thought to look into seminary’s or make any inquiries at all over a decade. It just doesn’t follow the intensity of their relationship and their own personality’s that they both just left it as is and never did any digging into how the other was or what they’d been doing all those years so I wasn’t a fan of the book I felt the author got caught up in irrelevant stuff when she should’ve followed through on the genuine and authenticity of her character who would’ve always found their way back to the other neither having the will power to stay away.