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Aug 20, 2018JimLoter rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
A young girl disappears in an English village and the mystery haunts the inhabitants for the decade or so after she goes missing. Written with short sentences and long flowing paragraphs, the book meanders through the lives of two dozen or so villagers - the lamb farmers, the potter, the newly-arrived yoga teacher, the school custodian, the newspaper editor and his BBC-producer wife, etc. - as their lives both follow and break routines over the years. Couples form and split up, babies are born, the reservoirs dry up and fill again, crops succeed and fail. Throughout it all, the memory of the missing girl hovers over everything. One remarkable thing about the writing is that none of the characters are described physically (except the missing girl - repeatedly) and yet I developed clear and distinct pictures of them as the glimpses into their lives washed over me. One could even read this book as if it is told from the girl's point-of-view - her spirit floating just adjacent to the living, unable to fix on any corporeal details (or uninterested in doing so) ... just observing the mundane, the surprising, and even the profane events play out.