Still Missing Returns Home

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to receive one of Siân's passed books (details here) via Rinda.  The book, "Still Missing" by Beth Gutcheon, started its journey last September and it will now be returning home after a year of travelling around the world, having visited Amy, Jacky, Mel, and Becky as well.

"Still Missing" and a beautiful card from Rinda

"Still Missing" describes every parent's worst nightmare: the disappearance of a child.  Alex, not quite seven years old, doesn't complete his two block walk to school one morning and his mother Susan, doesn't realise until he fails to return home that afternoon.  The book takes you through her initial panic, the involvement of the police, the media prying, the recriminations, the waiting for news of a breakthrough ...

I tried reading it each evening in the half-hour before "lights out", but found that my sleep patterns were being  affected by me empathising too closely with Alex's mother, so I had to find time in the day to read instead.  As the novel progresses, hope for the missing boy diminishes yet the reader's investment in the story increases - we all want a happy ending, but of course we know that cases like these do not always end happily and Beth Gutcheon raises the tension levels as each sighting, lead and "breakthrough" comes and goes.  As time progresses the boy's mother is encouraged to start letting go, to move on, even to think about having another child!  Naturally enough she cannot do any of these things and continues to press the police and media to keep searching for her son.

Four years ago Madeline McCann, aged just four, went missing from a Portuguese holiday apartment and her parents are still waiting, still hoping, still trying to be a family for their remaining two children.  Beth Gutcheon's book, written in 1981, gave me a deeper insight into the McCann family's continuing suffering as Maddy is still missing.

Thank you Siân for sending this book on its travels to me - it was not a comfortable read, but I am a better person for having read it.