Review of Alison Moore’s Novel – Missing

Alison Moore: Missing, Salt Publishing 2018

I am a huge fan of Alison Moore’s writing but I have been knocked out by the sheer brilliance of her latest book, Missing.  The wonderful sparse use of language, everyday language to build a sense of place, character, unease, is nothing short of wonderful.  Her interest in signs, the words that we encounter everyday are rendered weird and stifling, it makes you question their meaning and the intention behind their use. In that use of words she is the new Ali Smith, in the sense of the uncanny, she is the new Hilary Mantel, think Beyond Black, (yes Missing is as disturbing as that!) but in a quiet understated way, the way that gets beneath your skin, that leaves you wondering whether your own creaks are something more.. something sinister, not just projections.

The book moves from Hawick in Scotland, to Carlisle, and the Cambridgeshire fens, all marginal places all teetering on the edge of otherness, all strange and not fully formed but in Moore’s hands wordscapes, splaces (my invented words) where one might have been but know are best avoided.  The central character traverses these places carrying a burden, but also strangely oblivious to some of its ramifications especially for others.

I don’t want to write one of those irritating reviews which is nothing more than a precis of a story, because I hate being told too much or everything about a book/film/play.  Besides which I think that that kind of review is lazy, anyone can precis.  What I want is to whet your appetite to go a buy this book and read it for yourself.