This is a perfectly fine novel completely misserved by the attention its received. Ooooh, an American man has gone missing in the Mediterranean and his parents want someone to find him! Must compare it to Patricia Highsmith!
Oooooh a female narrator with a kind of ethereal voice narrates a strange marriage circumstance. Must compare it to Gone Girl!
But it’s neither Gone Girl nor is it Talented Mr. Ripley. It’s something altogether different those, more slow burn, very little suspense, a kind of mystery, but less about intrigue and more about how to process grief and loss and sociability.
In the novel, the narrator goes to Greece to try to find her errant husband, from whom she had recently separated, in part to ease his mother’s worrying, but also to finally, actually sever ties with him so she can move on with her life emotionally and circumstantially. She finds him missing when she arrives in Greece which complicates things for sure, but unlike a mystery where she is desperately trying to track him down to find him safely, she is slowly discovering some private elements about his life, but her main mission to find him in order to leave him remains her goal.
The differences then between this type of novel and the more salacious stuff above is about how to deal with the complicated responsibilities and emotions of marriage ending and where loyalties lies and how to unknit what has been knitted, even after it’s been torn open.
The book then reads a LOT more like Elena Ferrante’s early novels than anything thrillerish. There’s a mystery contained in the gap between knowing someone and not knowing someone.
