Find Me Gone
Written by Sarah Meuleman
Narrated by Cassandra Campbell
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
From Vogue Amsterdam columnist Sarah Meuleman comes a haunting, whip-smart debut novel about second chances and the lengths one young woman will go to keep her dark secrets sealed in the past.
1996. In the sleepy hamlet of Bachte-Maria-Leerne, in the Belgian countryside, the residents are reeling from the disappearance of several young girls. The country is thrown into a state of emergency and even after the killer is apprehended, not all the girls missing are found alive, causing further alarm and political protests in the form of White Marches.
At the local school, St. Martin’s High, the devastating news is met more with morbid fascination than fear among its students—except for twelve-year-old Sophie. Unlike her peers, Sophie knows what it’s like to be afraid and never truly feel safe. The only time she feels a sense of security and belonging is when she’s with her best friend Hannah… if only she could confide her darkest secrets to the girl she admires… the girl whose home life is so very different from Sophie’s… the girl whom Sophie wishes she could be more like.
When Hannah begins hanging out at a popular teenage club “The Sloop” and starts dating the charming and clever Damian, Sophie suddenly feels left out. With each day, Sophie notices Hannah drifting farther from her. Before the friends can reconcile, the village is thrown into fresh panic when Sophie fails to return home after a high school dance—and is never seen again.
2014. Hannah is living the life most young women dream of as a successful columnist for a fashion magazine in New York City. But after years of being the party reporter, documenting the revelries of the rich and famous, she craves a deeper subject for her writing. Quitting her job and leaving her former glitzy Manhattan lifestyle for a run-down apartment in Brooklyn, she spends her days writing a biography of three famous authors: Agatha Christie, Barbara Follett, and Virginia Woolf—three women who struggled with family, loyalty, and ambition… three women who one day disappeared without a trace.
As Hannah delves into her research and the lives of these luminaries, she’s forced to confront questions she’s tried so hard to repress. What happened to Sophie that night? How does a person just go missing, never to be heard from again? Taking readers on an exhilarating journey from the Flemish countryside to New York, Find Me Gone is equal parts thriller and tender coming-of-age story that will leave readers wondering until the final page…
What happened to Sophie?
Sarah Meuleman
Sarah Meuleman is a Belgian writer and journalist. She was co-creator and host of the television show Sarah’s Savages. Sarah is a Vogue columnist and has written many interviews with international artists, politicians and celebrities. She studied Germanic Philology (University of Ghent) and Literature (University of Amsterdam, cum laude). FIND ME GONE is her debut novel, that has already been published in Dutch and was nominated for the Bronzen Uil for best literary debut of 2015.
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Reviews for Find Me Gone
11 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5In this coming-of-age tale, after several years in New York City and with an uber-successful career as a fashion magazine columnist, Hannah decides she wants to write something more meaningful and abruptly quits her job. She’s determined to write about three authors . . . Agatha Christie, Barbara Newhall Follett, and Virginia Woolf . . . all of whom mysteriously disappeared after achieving success in their writing careers. Could Hannah’s obsession with these women have anything to do with her long-lost childhood friend, Sophie?The convoluted narrative, divided between the present and the late 1990s when best friends Hannah and Sophie were growing up in a small town in Belgium, incorporates chapters devoted to the three women authors; this purports to be portions of the book Hannah is supposedly writing.Unlikable characters who seem determined to embrace every unflattering, entitled attitude possible populate this depressing tale. Present-day Hannah is so self-absorbed and so busy feeling sorry for herself that, early in the narrative, the character becomes nothing but annoying. She falls into things like a leaf in the wind, apparently with no thought or reason. She picks up random guys, becomes a drug user late in the tale [with absolutely no predilection toward this sort of behavior throughout most of the story] . . . her “story” feels like nothing more than random acts haphazardly tossed together, offering no cohesiveness for the reader. The earlier story of the girls’ school days in Belgium is less random, but it, too, is discombobulated and suffers from both disconnectedness and unresolved plot points.There’s a “twist” near the end of the book that’s relatively easy to predict early on, but the late-in-the-tale appearance of the ghost makes it clear to the reader long before the revelation itself. Overall, this is a grim, dark read certain to leave readers disheartened. Don’t bother.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Find Me Gone from Sarah Meuleman is a suspense novel that grabs your interest early but doesn't rush along with it. The time invested, however, is well worth it. So if you're tempted to stop because it is slower than you normally like, keep going and make it more about the details than a straight line plot.The hints about what might be called the surprise are evident throughout the book but most only become obvious after the fact. Reflecting on the book after finishing actually increased my overall enjoyment. I often reread books (maybe 30-40 of my 175-200 books a year are rereads) and while this is not a genre I often reread I may make an exception here. Not so much for any "deeper" insights, though those may well come, but more to read the details with a knowledge of the resolution. Kinda like re-watching Sixth Sense for the clues and hints rather than the plot.I did enjoy the way the research into the writers worked along with Hannah's psychological journey. In imaging scenes from those writers' lives she would give them a phrase that she would then say in her real life, making a very interesting parallel.I found myself reading the first half or so of the book fairly slowly, so much so that I completed 4 other books during that time. But during those several days I often thought about what was happening and what I thought it all meant. So for a reader who wants a fast-paced event-leading-to-event type of book this will frustrate you a bit in the beginning. Again, I suggest sticking with it because the last part of the book moves faster and brings many fuzzy ideas into focus very well. I will say that if you don't read close enough to catch the literary parallel then perhaps this isn't for you, part of the fun is in the detail and if you skim details strictly for a story line then maybe not for you.In writing this I have actually reconsidered my rating and moved it up, it has stuck with me more than I had even realized.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.