Book Review: The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond

This book was recommended to me by a very good friend who said she couldn't put it down. She also goes through books at light speed, so I was thinking it might take me a couple of days to read. I was wrong; it took me 4 1/2 hours in the middle of the night. I started thinking I would see if it would suck me in; I put it down at the end, at 0630. I couldn't bear to put the book down before I knew exactly how the story played out.

The Year of Fog is about Abby Mason who, trying to bond with her fiancee's daughter, takes her on a trip to the beach while her dad is out of town. In an instant, little Emma disappears and the story begins. The author follows, in great detail, the first few days after the disappearance, and then time seems to spread out. It's written in first-person present-tense from Abby's perspective. There are no limits to the point of view in the book. We see all of Abby's memories, her horrible thoughts, and the replaying of details over and over, even after the police have given up searching and her fiancee, Jake, has held a memorial service for his little girl with nothing more than a shoe to guide them in the assumption that Emma was killed or drowned in the ocean.

Abby explores every option she can find, feeling that the new issues imported into the "previously wonderful" relationship she had with Jake can be resolved if she can find a way to rectify the wrong of losing his child. I started to wonder if the story was going to take a Bell Jar style turn, but it did not. Abby details her belief systems and explains how the Catholic dependence that gets Jake through does nothing for her. She explains how she is fueled 100% by instinct. She struggles with various philospohies and scientific explanations about memory, trying desperately to get back any information that will lead her to Emma.

Some of the central themes Abby was grasping with were forgiveness, trust, and support. The communication breakdown between she and Jake was almost instantaneous, because truthfully, they both blamed Abby for Emma's disappearance. No one ever tells Abby that she really did nothing different than almost any other parent would do. Emma didn't wander far, Emma wouldn't go near the water, and at some point, you have to stop all the hand holding. No one, other than her sister, seems to give Abby credit for feeling like Emma was her own child. There is never a single interaction with Jake in which I felt like he appreciated what Abby was going through. Perhaps anyone as the father in that situation would be entitled to a little selfishness with it, but he neither leans on her nor supports her. It makes me wonder if their relationship was all that wonderful to begin with.

Do they find her? Is it explained in the end? That's up to anyone interested in reading to find out. I will say the end wasn't very satisfying for me. It felt just as foggy as some of Abby's recollections about Emma's disapperance. Although it was completely in keeping with the characters' as described, I wished for a happier ending.

Fair warning, there were some depressing and somewhat graphic parts of the story. Abby gets into a little detail about a somewhat inappropriate relationship her 16 year old self had with a man eleven years her senior. There is a little bit of language, which didn't offend me, but if you are at all sensitive to it, you may consider steering clear. Also, some of the history of memory and philosophy can get kind of boring. With that in mind, the following are some of my favorite quotes.

"What is a search if not a dual exercise in hope and helplessness? It is hope that makes the search possible, helplessness that makes it simultaneously absurd. I want to believe that, buried deep in the grey matter...there exists a single detail, a minute piece of knowledge, a precise and crucial memory, that is sufficient to save a missing child."

"A life without memory is a life without meaning."

"I did not understand then that I was at the beginning of something, that each choice leads to some other choice, and another, and another, so that a single, seemingly meaningless decision reverberates through an entire life."

If you're interested in more on what I've been reading or need any book recommendations, head over to Good Reads .