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A review by gladiolus17
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Thanks to Netgalley for the E-arc!
Wow! This literary novel is heart wrenching, and yet sometimes funny. It follows Sally Holt as she grows up, learning about sex and boys, to navigating more adult relationships, all colored by the death of her sister. She also navigates through the sudden change of her parents. Before, they were kind and quirky, and after her sister’s death, now are irreversibly changed by grief.
The prose is sparse and punchy, and the dialog can be witty and painful. I found the mother’s dialog to be particularly funny!
Sally as a character took things literally, and that showed up how she processed grief. While her mother and father dealt with it through anger or through superstition, Sally dealt with it with the bare facts. But Billy was still Kathy’s boyfriend, as if Sally could not move past that fact, even after her sister passed.
The ending made me think on it for hours after finishing.
Wow! This literary novel is heart wrenching, and yet sometimes funny. It follows Sally Holt as she grows up, learning about sex and boys, to navigating more adult relationships, all colored by the death of her sister. She also navigates through the sudden change of her parents. Before, they were kind and quirky, and after her sister’s death, now are irreversibly changed by grief.
The prose is sparse and punchy, and the dialog can be witty and painful. I found the mother’s dialog to be particularly funny!
Sally as a character took things literally, and that showed up how she processed grief. While her mother and father dealt with it through anger or through superstition, Sally dealt with it with the bare facts. But Billy was still Kathy’s boyfriend, as if Sally could not move past that fact, even after her sister passed.
The ending made me think on it for hours after finishing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, and Grief