Still Missing interweaves the year Annie spent as the captive of a psychopath in a remote mountain cabin, which unfold through sessions with her psychiatrist, with a second narrative following the events after her escape—her struggle to piece her shattered life back together and the ongoing police investigation into the identity of her captor.
Still Missing is a shocking, visceral, brutal and beautifully crafted novel.
I sort of posted about this one prior to reading it in My Current Connundrum post. I often sign up to be on a hold list for a book ONLY if the line up has been ridiculously long and then scaled back to reasonable levels (don't ask me why I do it this way, it's just how I roll). This book was recommended to me by an avid reading coworker and when she first told me about it, it wasn't available from the library as an ebook, but one day I noticed it on the "new ebooks" page, so I popped it on my Wish List and went back to reading whichever book I was on at the time. I checked on it again when I was completed that book to find out that if I put it on hold that day, there would be 20-some people in front of me to read it, if each of them took two weeks to read it... well, you get the idea. I don't feel the need to put something on hold if it might be a year before it gets to me. I just check all of my Wish List books periodically, make sure I am still interested in reading them, and if it's a reasonable wait, I put a hold on them. Then I check how close I am to getting them every time I go to the website for any reason. I usually only have about 3 on hold at a time, and never close to getting them at the same time.... ANYWHOODLE, after posting the previous post (linked), I got it about a day later, and I solved my conundrum by just finishing the "sample" of the book offered and then I was lucky enough that it came available the day after, not hindering my writing groove at all. So, yay for that.
This book was devastating in so many ways. It is not for the faint of heart, so it's difficult for me to recommend. But I was definitely on the edge of my seat for most of it.
It's hard for me not to compare it to Room, which isn't really fair because they are very different, but with very similar premises. Still Missing is a Room-like story except everything that went well (er... at least, not horribly awful) for Jack and his mom, went absolutely horribly for Annie. The most basic example I can give without spoiling anything is that at least Jack and his mom had their own space and Old Nick would only show up at night. Annie could not escape her captor ever, and if he did leave, often she would go without food for a while, and start wondering if she was going to die because he might never came back. Think about ALL of those little things that Jack and his mom had that weren't terrible, those little things that kept them sane... Annie had none of those. I thought Room was horrific, well, Still Missing is Room x 10. Although one thing that I must say is that Room was written quite a bit better than Still Missing. There was something about the progression of the story and the use of Jack's narrative that made it a better read.
As much as I can say I liked this book, there were some parts that were pretty far out there when it came to believablity. Part of me (probably the corrections worker part) believe that there are people that would do harm to others in the way it was portrayed in this book, but part of me also believes that people like that would have just killed Annie and she never would have escaped. And then there is a whole "conflict of interest" relationship that I am sure would have compromised Annie's case and would have gotten one of her investigation team members removed from her case... so there are aspects about this book that I question. (Room on the other hand, no questions about whether or not something like that could happen in that way to someone.)
Still Missing had a greater sense of Mystery to it than Room did. Annie really didn't have a clue what happened to her, where she was, why she was chosen, etc. for most of the book. So those little tidbits of information that we were given so slowly really did keep the propulsion of the story going. So if I were to categorize this book, I would say it's a pop-culture mystery book whereas Room is very much more Modern Literature. Room was about recovery more than anything. No mystery there.
Overall, I would recommend Room before I would recommend this one, but I do feel Still Missing has it's place somewhere. Liking Room does not necessarily mean you will like this one, and vice versa. I would probably say you need a little bit more of a "morbid curiosity" for this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment