- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Knopf (Mar 3 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0307270157
- ISBN-13: 978-0307270153
- Product Dimensions: 16.8 x 3.7 x 24.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 658 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #331,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“That rare thing: a needful lesson that nourishes and delights.” –Laurel Maury, San Francisco Chronicle
“The Missing has the impact of a book twice its length. It’s a dramatic, theatrical meditation on law and lawlessness, guilt and the hollowness of vengeance [with] all the power, doomed inevitability and spiritual profundity of Conrad’s Victory and Nostromo or Faulkner’s Light in August...The anticipation clutching your throat makes you race towards the novel’s climax. Despite their wise and knowing humour, Gautreaux’s novels seem created out of urgent moral duty, and the importance of reading The Missing is to learn that to live without hatred is our only true privilege.” –Alan Warner, The Guardian (UK)
“Remarkable…Mr. Gautreaux has given us a compelling adventure tale with a moral center.” –Julia Reed, The Wall Street Journal
“Moving and resonant…Gautreaux is an old-fashioned storyteller, a spinner of yarns with a moral…[He] has a mythic sense of plot, a keen ear for dialect and vivid powers of description.” –Malena Watrous, The New York Times Book Review
“The Missing is Gautreaux's masterpiece, his most powerful novel to date.” –Susan Larson, New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Gautreaux's lyrical prose fairly soars…Jazz flows through The Missing like another river. So too do nuance and ambiguity…[Gautreaux] has created a grand story with unconventional heft.” –Fred Grimm, The Miami Herald
“Continually engaging…The Missing carries us along as it branches and swells, as if inspired by the great river on which so much of this book takes place…If you've been complaining that nobody writes novels as they used to, this could be your book for the spring.” –Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book World
“An exceptional novel...Gautreaux again displays fluent prose, accomplished storytelling, and strong characterizations in this paean to the indefatigability of the human spirit.” –Michele Leber, Booklist
“Haunting and transient…a refreshingly candid voice, brimming with a lyrical intensity [and] raw beauty.” –Publishers Weekly
“The Missing has the impact of a book twice its length. It’s a dramatic, theatrical meditation on law and lawlessness, guilt and the hollowness of vengeance [with] all the power, doomed inevitability and spiritual profundity of Conrad’s Victory and Nostromo or Faulkner’s Light in August...The anticipation clutching your throat makes you race towards the novel’s climax. Despite their wise and knowing humour, Gautreaux’s novels seem created out of urgent moral duty, and the importance of reading The Missing is to learn that to live without hatred is our only true privilege.” –Alan Warner, The Guardian (UK)
“Remarkable…Mr. Gautreaux has given us a compelling adventure tale with a moral center.” –Julia Reed, The Wall Street Journal
“Moving and resonant…Gautreaux is an old-fashioned storyteller, a spinner of yarns with a moral…[He] has a mythic sense of plot, a keen ear for dialect and vivid powers of description.” –Malena Watrous, The New York Times Book Review
“The Missing is Gautreaux's masterpiece, his most powerful novel to date.” –Susan Larson, New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Gautreaux's lyrical prose fairly soars…Jazz flows through The Missing like another river. So too do nuance and ambiguity…[Gautreaux] has created a grand story with unconventional heft.” –Fred Grimm, The Miami Herald
“Continually engaging…The Missing carries us along as it branches and swells, as if inspired by the great river on which so much of this book takes place…If you've been complaining that nobody writes novels as they used to, this could be your book for the spring.” –Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book World
“An exceptional novel...Gautreaux again displays fluent prose, accomplished storytelling, and strong characterizations in this paean to the indefatigability of the human spirit.” –Michele Leber, Booklist
“Haunting and transient…a refreshingly candid voice, brimming with a lyrical intensity [and] raw beauty.” –Publishers Weekly
Product Description
The author of The Clearing (“the finest American novel in a long, long time”—Annie Proulx) now surpasses himself with a story whose range and cast of characters is even broader, with the fate of a stolen child looming throughout.
Sam Simoneaux’s troopship docked in France just as World War I came to an end. Still, what he saw of the devastation there sent him back to New Orleans eager for a normal life and a job as a floorwalker in the city’s biggest department store, and to start anew with his wife years after losing a son to illness. But when a little girl disappears from the store on his shift, he loses his job and soon joins her parents working on a steamboat plying the Mississippi and providing musical entertainment en route. Sam comes to suspect that on the downriver journey someone had seen this magical child and arranged to steal her away, and this quest leads him not only into this raucous new life on the river and in the towns along its banks but also on a journey deep into the Arkansas wilderness. Here he begins to piece together what had happened to the girl—a discovery that endangers everyone involved and sheds new light on the massacre of his own family decades before.
Tim Gautreaux brings to vivid life the exotic world of steamboats and shifting currents and rough crowds, of the music of the twenties, of a nation lurching away from war into an uneasy peace at a time when civilization was only beginning to penetrate a hinterlands in which law was often an unknown force. The Missing is the story of a man fighting to redeem himself, of parents coping with horrific loss with only a whisper of hope to sustain them, of others for whom kidnapping is either only a job or a dream come true. The suspense—and the complicated web of violence that eventually links Sam to complete strangers—is relentless, urgently engaging and, ultimately, profoundly moving, the finest demonstration yet of Gautreaux’s understanding of landscape, history, human travail, and hope.
Sam Simoneaux’s troopship docked in France just as World War I came to an end. Still, what he saw of the devastation there sent him back to New Orleans eager for a normal life and a job as a floorwalker in the city’s biggest department store, and to start anew with his wife years after losing a son to illness. But when a little girl disappears from the store on his shift, he loses his job and soon joins her parents working on a steamboat plying the Mississippi and providing musical entertainment en route. Sam comes to suspect that on the downriver journey someone had seen this magical child and arranged to steal her away, and this quest leads him not only into this raucous new life on the river and in the towns along its banks but also on a journey deep into the Arkansas wilderness. Here he begins to piece together what had happened to the girl—a discovery that endangers everyone involved and sheds new light on the massacre of his own family decades before.
Tim Gautreaux brings to vivid life the exotic world of steamboats and shifting currents and rough crowds, of the music of the twenties, of a nation lurching away from war into an uneasy peace at a time when civilization was only beginning to penetrate a hinterlands in which law was often an unknown force. The Missing is the story of a man fighting to redeem himself, of parents coping with horrific loss with only a whisper of hope to sustain them, of others for whom kidnapping is either only a job or a dream come true. The suspense—and the complicated web of violence that eventually links Sam to complete strangers—is relentless, urgently engaging and, ultimately, profoundly moving, the finest demonstration yet of Gautreaux’s understanding of landscape, history, human travail, and hope.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exquisite!, Mar 13 2009
By Charlotte Vale-Allen - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Missing (Hardcover)
Tim Gautreaux is a dream of a writer, with a rare and wonderful talent for setting an era and populating it with fascinating people. I say "people" because his creations are far more substantial than mere characters; they get up and walk around and fascinate the reader with their unpredictability. Nothing, in any of his books, is ever predictable. This time out, he takes us for a lengthy ride on a ramshackle entertainment steamboat, making music and discovering his personal depths as he searches for a stolen child and his long-lost family. From small children to rotting-alive villains, everyone is real; and one reads, often, with held breath--fearful/hopeful of what might happen next. This is, quite simply, as good as it gets when it comes to quality fiction. And, as with his previous novels, I despaired of getting to the end because I'll have to wait now for the next wonderful piece of writing to come. My applause to the immensely gifted author and my highest recommendation to readers.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"In Heaven all the interesting people are missing." Nietzshe, Feb 14 2010
By michael a. draper - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Missing (Hardcover)
Not since reading Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain," have I wholeheartedly enjoyed a story of a time in history and the characters who had so much to tell as in reading "The Missing."It's New Orleans, after WWI, Sam Simoneaux returns from the war. He hadn't engaged in the action but still experienced the horrific aftermath of the conflict. At home, ready for a more peaceful life, he takes a job as a floor walker at a department store. A little girl is kidnapped from the store while he is on duty and he loses his job.
Having lost a child to sickenss, he's anguished by the parents' pain. He accepts a job, joining them on a steamboat providing entertainment along the Mississippi waters. Sam feels that he could search for the missing child as the boat stops at towns along the river.
He keeps his eyes open, looking for the one thing he remembers about the kidnapping, a woman missing her front teeth.
As Sam's search continues, the author's rich description of life along the river banks draws the reader's interest and imagination. We observe hard working men and women drawn to the boat by the sounds of the calliope.
One lead surfaces about a family named Shadlock. What happens next makes Sam greatful that he's still alive. He's a haunted character, but admirable for his compassion, bravery and determination.
The Mississippi is also a character as the reader experiences the life of the people along its shores. We see the lawlessness, the excitement that the musical steamboat brings to the farmers, the saw millers, and "hillbillies" along the river's edge. In this manner, there is a similarity to Inman's odyssey in "Cold Mountain," experiencing the people on his travels back home after the war, wanting to be with his love and have peace.
Among the other characters, Ralph Shadlock, who bemoaned the loss of his dog more than the death of his mother was the most memorable.
The plot was rich with folklore and descriptions of life in the past, it provides a vivid picture of the music, prejudice and difficulties of the time.
37 of 42 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An unforgettable tale by a master storyteller, Mar 16 2009
By Darrelyn Saloom ficwriter "Darrelyn Saloom fi... - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Missing (Hardcover)
Welcome to the world of Sam Simoneaux, a man born from a cold potbellied stove. Plucked from its ashes by his uncle, a Frenchman farmer in Louisiana, because his mother is dead and is joined by his father. Leaving Simoneaux with only his father's French blood and his love of music. And both serve him well on his exotic journey from his uncle's farm to New Orleans to a steamboat called the Ambassador. A violent trek that takes him face-to-face with his own loss and "into a wild uncharted, dead-serious place cut off from fathers and all things fathers teach and give."Ironically, while searching for a missing girl, the fatherless Frenchman becomes mentor to the missing girl's brother, August. Simoneaux befriends the boy on the Ambassador while playing music for pugilistic backwater men and women picked up in places like Stovepipe Bend and Chicken Neck Island. But it is when Simoneaux follows August deep into the woods, seeking his younger sister and revenge on her kidnappers that their friendship deepens and the Frenchman teaches August the truth of his grudge: "You'd like to think you're going to help your mamma or provide justice for the world, but you really just want to kill somebody to make yourself feel big."
The Frenchman's journey is a suspenseful mule ride into the woods, on railways through backwater towns, on steamboats along riverbanks, and eventually back to streetcars and his wife, Linda, in New Orleans. But it is so much more than a means of transportation into violence and kidnappings and revenge. It is the journey of a gentle man, who needs to redeem himself for an unlucky fate. A man whose journey does not end until his paddlewheel turns full circle and takes him back to the house of his own massacred family. And back to the potbellied stove where his story began.
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