Product Description

Isabel, Owen and Julia were childhood friends. But when they were fifteen, Julia disappeared without a trace – an event that had a devastating impact on the others.

Years later, Isabel returns to her home town in the north of England for Owen’s funeral. She hadn’t seen him since they recklessly burned down the local supermarket together; he was sent to prison and she, just shy of her 18th birthday, to a young offenders’ centre. Isabel suspects that Owen was responsible for Julia’s murder, and she’s hoping finally to find some kind of resolution.

Feeling cut off from her husband and child in Turkey, and awash with unexpected memories, Isabel ventures further into the murky depths of her past. But nothing is as it seems – either past or present – and as Isabel’s world unravels we finally realise the stunning, shattering truth . . .

'Exquisitely written yet utterly chilling, this will keep you gripped from start to finish; a potential book-group classic' Elle magazine

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148782 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 278 pages

Independent on Sunday
'Susanna Jones writes in a plain, pellucid style, and uses it to tell a dark story... Experimental, teasing but always utterly readable...'

Review

‘Anyone familiar with Jones’s two previous books will know that, in her deliciously disorientating fictional worlds, nothing is ever quite as it seems… Jones is a mistress of disguise, not just in her characterization and plotting, but in her blurring of the divisions between right and wrong. Hers isn’t quite the deliberate amorality of Patricia Highsmith, but she similarly denies us any easy options when it comes to taking sides for or against her protagonists. With Isabel, in The Missing Person’s Guide to Love, Jones has fashioned her most complex, involving heroine yet and by far her most audacious sleight of hand in terms of a storyteller. To call it a twist would be to devalue what is really a hidden undercurrent of the whole narrative; nevertheless the revelation, when it comes, is breathtaking’ Literary Review

‘Exquisitely written yet utterly chilling, this will keep you gripped from start to finish: a potential book-group classic’ Elle

‘An intriguing tale… An engrossing read, and one that’s quite mysterious at times, this is a book that you won’t be able to put down’ Easy Living

‘Mesmerising mystery… Disturbing and intriguing’ Woman & Home

Easy Living
'An intriguing tale...this is a book that you won't be able to put
down.'

Customer Reviews

A Book That Will Make You Think . . .
If you have read either of Susanna Jones's earlier novels, The Earthquake Bird and Water Lily, then you will have an idea of the sort of thing to expect with her latest offering. The writing is superb, deceptively simple and with real pace. I had been warned that I needed to concentrate to fully appreciate this book, so I made a conscious effort to read more slowly. If I hadn't I would probably have whizzed through the book in a single sitting, and may have ended up confused. Because - as the blurb says - nothing is as it seems.

I think if you read the book as a detective novel (which up to a point it is, with Isabel trying to discover the truth about what happened to her friend Julia) you should spot the clues to what's really going on. This is a very clever book by a fine writer.

Almost loved it....
This is a beautifully written book that had me gripped from the start. On the surface of it, a disparate group of slightly odd people come together at a funeral to try to solve the mystery of what happened to a young girl who went missing years earlier. It all feels a litle strange, however, the writing is ephemereal, nothing feels quite real. This is because much more lies beneath and by the end of the story everything that went before must be viewed in a different light. It's one of those books that probably needs two reads to be fully appreciated. It left me feeling a little disturbed and haunted. Definitely worth a read (and a lot better than some of the Richard and Judy books this year!)

Still Waters
I love the quality of Jones's prose - as in her two previous works, it's spare, resonant and, at times, troublingly beautiful. An almost palpable sense of the Yorkshire landscape permeates the story: the otherworldly moors, the small town claustrophobia, not to mention the vast reservoir at the centre of the heroine's hometown, a body of water which spreads into a brooding centre for the plot itself. It's a fitting metaphor for this unconventional mystery novel - still waters running deep. I'm not a crime/mystery reader, and yet I found myself intrigued and moved by Isabel's struggle to lay old ghosts to rest.