PositiveBrooklyn RailWhile Nobody Is Ever Missing could blandly be called another \'postmodern\' novel, it better unfolds a map of navigating postmodern life, which we’ve come to define as the perpetual unraveling of identity, purpose, and passion in a life of frank uncertainty ... A novel that begins with the exodus of one woman and her multifarious identity crises, Catherine Lacey’s debut work is a blend of upper class ennui, existential crisis, and the variant traumas of human existence. Of course it’s alternately comedic and tragic, of course it’s clever and self-conscious about its own cleverness, and of course it slips into insight in the midst of its most desperate insecurities. But Elyria is in contest with the personal certainty that \'no one is anything more than a slow event and I knew I was not a woman but a series of movements, not a life, but a shake,\' and to still her life, even after returning to New York, would be a simplified plot line she’d only write for her soap opera.
