Anyone who grew up in the suburbs will recognize the kind of accident at the heart of Alison Espach's novel...High-schooler Billy Barnes is driving his girlfriend Kathy Holt and her younger sister Sally to school one morning; he isn't drunk and he isn't reckless but he's distractible and inexperienced, and, swerving from a deer, he hits a tree, killing Kathy...The novel is Sally's story, told when she is 28 and addressed to the memory of her sister...It is a confessional about the effects Kathy's death had on their Connecticut town, on their struggling parents and on Sally's own passage into adulthood...The novel is congruously funny...This is the humor of irony and conversational banter, the deflections used when intense grief threatens to overwhelm ordinary middle-class existence.
Told over the course of 15 years, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is a seamless blend of genres: wry, humorous coming-of-age; star-crossed love story; and, above all, an achingly honest portrayal of grief...While maintaining a beautiful, touching, melancholic tone throughout, the book is neither dreary nor depressing, but rather a riveting blend of raw human emotions as seen and expressed through a truly singular voice...Sally's observations are searing, provocative and often hilarious, and although the shadow of grief hangs over them, so too does the bright, wise-beyond-her-years girl shine from inside them.
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is about the crushing mantle of guilt...It's also a love story...It takes Sally and Billy pages to get together and learn how to let go of Kathy, and in the meantime they try to discover who they are...It might be a little uncomfortable for readers to watch this eighth grader grow up and develop a relationship with a boy she knew as a high school senior who dated her dead sister, but Espach handles the situation with sensitivity...Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is a story about love, sisterhood and the power of acceptance...It's a lovely novel, and if readers can ignore its small flaws, they will be in for a real treat.
