In the spirit of Haruki Murakami and Amelia Gray, Catherine Lacey's
Nobody Is Ever Missing is full of mordant humor and uncanny insights,
as Elyria waffles between obsession and numbness in the face of love,
loss, danger, and self-knowledge.
Without telling her family, Elyria takes a one-way flight to New
Zealand, abruptly leaving her stable but unfulfilling life in Manhattan.
As her husband scrambles to figure out what happened to her, Elyria
hurtles into the unknown, testing fate by hitchhiking, tacitly being
swept into the lives of strangers, and sleeping in fields, forests, and
public parks.
Her risky and often surreal encounters with the people and wildlife of
New Zealand propel Elyria deeper into her deteriorating mind. Haunted by
her sister's death and consumed by an inner violence, her growing rage
remains so expertly concealed that those who meet her sense nothing
unwell. This discord between her inner and outer reality leads her to
another obsession: If her truest self is invisible and unknowable to
others, is she even alive?
The risks Elyria takes on her journey are paralleled by the risks
Catherine Lacey takes on the page. In urgent, spiraling prose she
whittles away at the rage within Elyria and exposes the very real, very
knowable anxiety of the human condition. And yet somehow Lacey manages
to poke fun at her unrelenting self-consciousness, her high-stakes
search for the dark heart of the self.
