Sam Simoneaux has come back to New Orleans from a less than glorious tour of duty at the end of World War I to work security at the city’s biggest department store. When a little girl is abducted on his watch, he feels personally responsible. His dogged search leads him to pose as a piano player on a Mississippi riverboat as he tracks the girl and her kidnappers. Simoneaux is searching not only for the missing girl but for himself. He must save her to save himself, as well as his career and marriage.
This is one of those books I take out every so often and dip into again, sometimes just to be transported into an engrossing story back in the glory days of riverboats, and sometimes just to marvel at Gautreaux’s mastery. His prose ranges from blunt and workmanlike to poetic and dreamlike, with sardonic observations that are often laugh-out-loud funny.
The novel can be enjoyed just as an expertly paced thriller or more deeply for its themes of searching, history, love, duty, and persistent hope in the midst of hopelessness.
This is Gautreaux’s second novel, and he’s perhaps more known for his often hilarious short stories in the collections such as Welding with Children and Same Place, Same Things. Do yourself a favor and look those up some time, too.
THE MISSING
Tim Gautreaux
Alfred A. Knopf, 2009
375 pages
Dorothy Allison is best known for her unflinching and largely autobiographical tale of abuse, violence, and poverty in her award-winning novel Bastard Out of Carolin. But another compelling, overlooked book of hers is this very slim memoir, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, that packs more into ninety-four pages than many other books manage in five hundred.
She pays homage to the flawed but strong women in her family and the deeply troubled men they loved, and includes some deceptively light anecdotes and family photos. Allison is understated yet powerful in her depictions of tragedy, abuse, and ongoing oppression. The vignettes often end with a hard-won insight starting with the italicized phrase from the title:
Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that no one is as hard as my uncles had to pretend to be.
Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.
Ultimately it tracks the unmaking of a family with the odds stacked against them, and the making of a fearless young writer, feminist—and survivor. The beauty of Allison’s writing comes from telling the ugly truth with staunch love, understanding, and astonishing grace.
TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW FOR SURE
Dorothy Allison
Penguin Group, 1995
94 pages