- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (1 Feb 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099284359
- ISBN-13: 978-0099284352
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,332,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Margot Livesey is an artist of alluring unease. Enter London through her looking glass, if you dare; once you do, it's doubtful you'll want to emerge. In her ruthlessly funny third novel, The Missing World , a modern Rapunzel is imprisoned in a none-too-tall Highbury house after losing much of her memory in an accident. Hazel's captor? The beekeeping insurance adjuster with whom she used to live. Jonathan is now determined to restore their relationship, even if he has to embalm it in lies: "Why am I doing this? he wondered, sitting on the edge of the bed. The answer perfumed the air, sweet as violets: because I can." Hazel's rescuers? Freddie, a black American roofer who would give anything "for a decent, ordinary phobia," and Charlotte, a rackety actress who's been on a sponging odyssey around London ever since her boyfriend left her and became a success: "Charlotte had perfected a look of keen interest when people insisted on telling her how well he was doing." And then there's Maud, who has her own reasons for keeping her best friend, Hazel, in the dark, and Mr. Early, an entirely bald designer of mannequin heads.
How these wildly different individuals converge is only one of The Missing World 's many exhilarations. Livesey slowly, tantalizingly has her characters reveal themselves as they bump up against reality. She also has an eye--and a perfect ear--for evasions and illusion. Jonathan is particularly adept at turning wish fulfilment into an extreme sport, convincing himself that subterfuge is the only way to go:
He wanted Hazel better, of course, but wasn't that like desiring his own banishment? What he really wanted was for her to recover not merely from the accident but from the delusions that had carried her away from him.
Energy, as Blake puts it, is eternal delight, and with its plethora of farcical entrances and exits, The Missing World has energy to burn. Yet just as often Livesey conquers by oddball understatement. Emerging from her coma, Hazel "opened her eyes and gazed up at the four of them. The colour of her irises had deepened, as if the long twilight of the last week had taken up permanent residence in her brain." With her predilection for the narrative ambush, Livesey has been likened to PD James and Patricia Highsmith--but she may even exceed these grandes dames in this brilliant exploration of where devotion ends and danger begins. --Kerry Fried, Amazon.com --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
"Adroitly paced, meticulously plotted, and increasingly suspenseful, the novel transcends its genre as psychological thriller. Livesey's characterizations are rich and resonant, imbuing the narrative with integrity and complexity. Once again, she has written a book that begs to be read in one sitting, and rewards the reader with insights into the hidden wellsprings of human behavior." --"Publishers Weekly
"From the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Jonathan and Hazel are quarrelling over the phone when something very strange occurs. Hazel suddenly becomes incoherent, mouthing strange words and there comes down the line a terrific thud. Jonathan runs out of the house they had shared for three years and which Hazel had left a few weeks ago, and rushes to her new flat. He finds her collapsed, in the grip of a terrifying fit.The hospital she is taken to is unable to identify what is wrong with Hazel, but when at last she opens her eyes and murmurs his name it quickly becomes evident that Hazel has great gaps in her memory. It is with everyone's approval that on release from hospital, with the help of medication to control the severity of the fits, Jonathan takes her home - to his house.
Jonathan is very much in love with Hazel, so the reader finds it only slightly creepy when he acts as if their break-up never happened. But it quickly becomes clear that Jonathan's love has tipped over the edge into obsession. It soon seems as if Hazel might recover some of her memories, but rather than encouraging these signs, Jonathan finds himself terrified that she will remember the events that caused their break-up. By now, however, Hazel is very much Jonathan's prisoner.
In between the description of Hazel and Jonathan's household we are given details from two other lives: Charlotte, an aspiring actress whose life is disintegrating before her eyes, mostly because she cannot manage to get herself to go to auditions, and Freddie, a black American who seems to be running from his unsuccessful career path and an overbearing father, who has, nonetheless bank-rolled his escape. There are a number of other minor characters, who are important to the plot, most of whom gradually converge in a night of violence that veers between the comic and the horrific.
This is not as successful a book as Livesey's wonderful Banishing Verona, mainly because its characters are sometimes difficult to identify with, especially Charlotte. But everyone knows someone like Charlotte - she has not one iota of self-knowledge and spends her time pretending to be playing different roles in order to fill up the emptiness she sometimes glimpses in herself. Hazel for the most part remains a beautiful victim. Jonathan comes alive, however, most definitely, and it is his self-deluded mistakes and wishful thinking that fire the plot. There is a whizz-bang ending that leaves things somewhat up in the air. It is a compelling read and the writing is atmospheric and often wittily enjoyable.
Jonathan is very much in love with Hazel, so the reader finds it only slightly creepy when he acts as if their break-up never happened. But it quickly becomes clear that Jonathan's love has tipped over the edge into obsession. It soon seems as if Hazel might recover some of her memories, but rather than encouraging these signs, Jonathan finds himself terrified that she will remember the events that caused their break-up. By now, however, Hazel is very much Jonathan's prisoner.
In between the description of Hazel and Jonathan's household we are given details from two other lives: Charlotte, an aspiring actress whose life is disintegrating before her eyes, mostly because she cannot manage to get herself to go to auditions, and Freddie, a black American who seems to be running from his unsuccessful career path and an overbearing father, who has, nonetheless bank-rolled his escape. There are a number of other minor characters, who are important to the plot, most of whom gradually converge in a night of violence that veers between the comic and the horrific.
This is not as successful a book as Livesey's wonderful Banishing Verona, mainly because its characters are sometimes difficult to identify with, especially Charlotte. But everyone knows someone like Charlotte - she has not one iota of self-knowledge and spends her time pretending to be playing different roles in order to fill up the emptiness she sometimes glimpses in herself. Hazel for the most part remains a beautiful victim. Jonathan comes alive, however, most definitely, and it is his self-deluded mistakes and wishful thinking that fire the plot. There is a whizz-bang ending that leaves things somewhat up in the air. It is a compelling read and the writing is atmospheric and often wittily enjoyable.
Format:Paperback
Jonathan can hardly believe his luck when the girlfriend who left him, but who he is still mad about, has an accident that erases the part of her memory containing pretty well everything to do with why she left him. Things get even better when, for reasons he can't quite fathom but is only too happy to accept, it is proposed that Hazel be discharged from the hospital into his care in 'their' home. To compound his good fortune it soon becomes clear that of those who could well oppose this proposal because they know what happened before the accident - Hazel's parents, for example, or her best friend Maud - none of them intends to raise the slightest objection. Given this marvellous opportunity to reinvent the past and conveniently erase any mistakes he might have made, Jonathan naturally resents the intrusion of anyone likely to mess his plans up. Falling into this category are a nervous american roofer, Freddy, and Charlotte, a 'resting' actress who has herself never recovered from being dumped by her last boyfriend. As Hazel's memory begins to improve poor old Jonathan grows increasingly desperate to remain in control of events. The momentum of the novel increases as it moves towards a resolution and the author writes delightfully, succeeding brilliantly in getting inside the minds of her fairly unstable characters, so much so that none of their idiosyncrasies seems implausible. Margot Livesey has clearly done a lot of research and spoken to some impressive experts, including Susan Greenfield. This is a first class psychological thriller.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
28 reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Far from harmless
26 Feb 2000
Format:Hardcover
What a strange piece of luck a snowy night in north London is for Jonathan, the deeply obsessive lover in Margot Livesey's "The Missing World." A car skids and knocks down Hazel, his estranged girlfriend. He finds her almost comatose and rushes her to hospital. Lo and behold, by the time she regains consciousness, days later, she has completely forgotten how utterly she loathed the man-and the good reasons she had for her loathing. "A new beginning." he thinks and whisks her back home again. Hazel continues to suffer debilitating seizures and Jonathan envelops her in suffocating solicitude. She is grateful, but the reader knows she's in for a rough passage.
So begins a keenly heard, beautifully crafted, but ultimately very odd novel. Livesey has been compared to Patricia Highsmith, but to me, the better match would be Jane Smiley. The story unfolds with such frank and cheery ordinariness and stays always within bounds of trendy, but entirely plausible behavior. Yet surreal and menacing strains appear almost at once. In a common suspense novel, guns might be drawn to create drama or characters might be threatened by tough-guy hoodlums. In "The Missing World," Charlotte, an out-of-work actress, finds herself abruptly chucked onto the street by a fickle sister. To Livesey's enduring credit, being homeless in winter London is made every bit as frightening as a set of brass knuckles.
But the central vulnerability continues to be beautiful Hazel. Turn by turn, we follow two characters who become drawn into her needy arc. Freddie the roofer finds himself newly energized by a desire to save her. Charlotte is willing to help, but wants to save herself. There are passages of breathtaking treachery and a net seems to draw tight. Ultimately, we get a climax of mild action and escape. But then the lens draws back and we realize that perhaps we don't yet understand this novel after all.
In a way, this novel might itself be a sort of seizure. It arises mysteriously and releases storms of energy. Thoroughly eccentric, but completely convincing characters are drawn into brief constellation. Meaningless rituals are enacted with total conviction. And at the heart of the obsession are the bees, humming and rubbing in their winter hive. Finally, just as mysteriously, the events exhaust themselves and the novel, quite literally, collapses onto a couch.
Or perhaps the parallel is "Midsummer Night's Dream," which is quoted at several points. "Missing World" has similar viscous jealousies and transporting slumbers. Characters make fools of themselves for love. Ultimately, they awaken and can recall neither the love nor the peril. Only a sense of loss and longing remains. The result is comic, but far from harmless
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Second Chances Gone Awry
13 Mar 2000
Format:Hardcover
The brilliant idea behind this novel is the idea of "second chances" to right the wrongs one has committed, and who doesn't want to get a second chance tossed his or her way once in a while? So I began this book somehow pulling for Jonathan who is hoping to make ammends after the disasterous breakup with his girlfriend Hazel - who P.S. - has amnesia after an accident and can't remember that they are finished. Then Margot Livesey so deftly and eerily twists the story, and the character of Jonathan is gradually unpeeled, layer after layer, until we want to leap into the pages to rescue Hazel. The other characters surrounding Hazel and Jonathan are just as fascinating and disturbing, one of my favorites being Charlotte, an out-of-work actress with a magnificent heart that gets trampled upon constantly, whether it's by her unforgiving sister, Nurse Bernie, or her louse of a boyfriend. The Missing World really is a stunning read and quite impossible to put down.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
an intricate, moving novel
15 Feb 2000
Format:Hardcover
I found THE MISSING WORLD extraordinary for how it renders the complexity of its characters, their deep flaws and deep yearnings, while never backing up and passing judgment on them. By shifting points of view, Margot Livesey allows us to keep seeing the world of this novel from multiple vantage points; the results are at once gripping and psychologically complex. The novel explores memory and repression, the way people can manipulate each other, the blindness of both love and hatred--all while being an unbelievably engrossing read.
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