Alexandra, Gone-Anna McPartlin

Alexandra, Gone
Anna McPartlin
Downtown, Apr 13 2010, $15.00
ISBN: 9781439123331

In Dublin, thirty something Alexandra Kavanagh disappears. Her husband Tom is stunned with his loss as she had no reason to vanish in his opinion, but if something bad happened to her he does not know and cannot seek closure.

Tom runs to into Alexandra’s best friend when she was growing up, Jane Moore on a stick elevator. Jane muses to the time when the pair drifted apart in their teens when she became pregnant. Now seventeen years since giving birth, she is a single mom, running an art gallery, her volatile mom, and managing her sister Elle’s painting career. Tom is taken aback by her energy as Jane urges him to search for his wife. Jane, and the other stickees (Elle and reclusive web designer Leslie Sheehan) join Tom on an Ireland-wide quest, but nothing new surfaces re Alexandra, Gone. However, the group finds separate solace as the sisters resolve their traumatic pasts, Leslie comes out of her hermit existence to make friends and Tom moves forward with his grief.

This is an interesting character study of four people seeking the missing connection that binds them. Each member of the quartet comes across unique with issues, but the bonding of friendship enables all of them to move on. Ironically the prime link Alexandra never is fully developed as insight into her is inductive through for instance songs she enjoyed. Thus the entertaining story line lacks any tension re Alexandra, Gone, but instead the humor and tautness come from the foursome’s personal problems.

Harriet Klausner