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 bestselling author of The Wedding People, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a Today Show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick, a Barnes and Noble Book Club Pick, and a #1 Indie Next Pick. The Wedding People spent several dozen weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and will be published in over 35 countries. She is also the author of Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, a Chicago Tribune and NPR “Best Book of the Year,” as well as The Adults, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Barnes and Noble Discover Pick. Her fictional audio series In-Depth Market Research Interviews with Dead People is an Audible Original. She has written for McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside, LitHub, Joyland and other places. She lives and teaches creative writing in Rhode Island.Alison received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation for the Arts, Millay Arts, The Wassaic Project, the Cuttyhunk Writers Residency and the San Miguel Literary Sala.

About Jesse Vilinsky

Jesse Vilinsky is an award-winning narrator and accomplished voice actress. She has recorded over 350 audiobooks, and is known for her ability in bringing forth the strength, truth and vulnerability of her expertly voiced characters, as well as the depth and nuance of each narrative she tells. She is also known for her comedic timing, and quirky YA styling. She strives to make an author’s deftly created world 3D in the listener’s mind, and to aid them, and herself, in disappearing into their stories. She has been nominated for and won two Audie Awards, nominated for five and won two Voice Arts Awards, and has won 14 Earphones Awards.As a voice actress, she has been featured in many films and television shows, including The Giver, The New Mutants, Yellowstone and Rick & Morty, can also be heard in many major video game projects, such as Dead by Daylight: Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Duty 6: Black Ops and Alone in the Dark.


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