Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, Alison Espach
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, Alison Espach
2 Rating(s)
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Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance
A Novel

Author: Alison Espach

Narrator: Jesse Vilinsky

Unabridged: 12 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/17/2022


Synopsis

From Alison Espach, author of the New York Times Editor’s Choice novel The Adults, comes a dazzlingly unconventional love story for readers of Ask Again, Yes and Tell the Wolves I’m Home

The summer before Sally Holt starts the 8th grade begins as a gloriously uneventful one, full of family trips to the beach and long afternoons at the local pool with her older sister Kathy, which they mostly use as an excuse to ogle Billy Barnes, who works the concession stand there. A rising senior and local basketball star, Billy has been an unending source of intrigue for both girls since he jumped off the school roof in fifth grade, and their fascination with him is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. By summer’s end Billy and Kathy are an item—an unthinkable stroke of luck that ends in an even more unthinkable tragedy.

Set over the course of fifteen years, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance: A Novel by Alison Espach is narrated by Sally as she addresses Kathy before, during, and after Kathy’s death. We watch as Kathy’s absence creates a gaping hole that only Billy—now firmly off limits to Sally—understands and might possibly begin to fill. Charting years of their shared history and missed connections, Notes is both a breathtaking love story between two broken people who are unexplainably, inconveniently drawn to each other, and a wry, sharply observant coming of age story that looks at the ways the people we love the most continue to shape our lives long after they’re gone.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

About Alison Espach

Alison Espach is the author of the novels The Adults, a New York Times Editors' Choice and a Barnes & Noble Discover pick, and Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, which was named a best book of 2022 by the Chicago Tribune and NPR. Her short stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside, Joyland, and other places. She is a professor of creative writing at Providence College in Rhode Island.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Melissa (Semi-hiatus for Work) on May 17, 2022

This is such a melancholy, yet lovely book. Sally narrates the story, telling it to her sister Kathy, who died in a car accident when she was in high school. It is the tale of grief manifested in many ways--by Sally, who was in the car but unhurt, by Kathy's boyfriend Billy, who was driving, and by......more

Goodreads review by Ilenia on December 24, 2022

Un diario lungo più di dieci anni, destinato a una sorella scomparsa ma il cui reale fine è rispondere a una domanda impossibile: come si mantiene il legame con chi abbiamo perso e allo stesso tempo scioglierlo per andare avanti? Dotata di un umorismo insolito, l’autrice costruisce una storia unica......more

Goodreads review by Kezia on December 31, 2022

3.5⭐️ I didn’t expect this story to be the kind of story it is. Tell me why I thought this was going to be some sort of mystery?! I have no one to blame but myself for that. The main story is told from the lens of Sally who constantly uses the second person tense to refer to her sister Kathy. It is q......more

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach was a powerful book about the themes of loss, grief and love. Aren’t we all guilty at times of being complacent about life and all we hold dear to us? Life can change in the blink of an eye. All that we took for granted can be snatched away so quic......more

Goodreads review by Debra on April 22, 2022

3.5 stars Sisters, summers at the pool and one tragic night. As the book begins, we see Sally Holt starting the eighth grade. Her older sister Kathy can finally say that Billy Barnes, who the sisters have been ogling all summer, is her boyfriend. Kathy is overjoyed and Sally is intrigued. The book spa......more


Awards

  • NPR Best Book of the Year