I was mooching around Auckland international airport the other day and picked up a copy of the new bestseller The Nowhere Boy, a debut novel by Tauranga writer Anne Cleary. Within seconds of reading the opening chapter, the racket of flight announcements fell to a background murmur. I was transported to a terrifying scene Cleary sets at Muriwai Beach. A little boy goes missing. He was with his Dad. The father panics, searches everywhere, calls out his name, and—nothing. Disappeared. Vanished. Just like that, there one minute, gone the next, maybe forever.
Good premise for a book. Every parent has experienced that fear. It’s almost always nothing. But you don’t know that in the time you’re suspended in that awful void, and you think of Madeline McCann, you think of some creature from a black lagoon, you think of the small, vulnerable shape of your lost child … I don’t know what happens yet in The Nowhere Boy, whether it has a happy ending, but I will sit down soon and read the rest of it.
A free copy of the novel was up for grabs in the weekly ReadingRoom giveaway contest, held last weekend. Readers were asked to share a story about someone missing who was found. It was an immensely popular contest. Happy endings poured in but each of them walked the tightrope of not knowing how it would work out.
Many were from parents with missing children who came back. David wrote, “I could write a book on the times my youngest son, Jordan, has disappeared. He has Down Syndrome (DS), and it’s often a trait in people with DS to go for a wander.” He detailed a few incidents but they all turned out fine. John wrote about going to a North Canterbury beach with his family. His son went surfing. “I ask my wife if the young fella has come in yet. She replies, ‘No, I thought he was with you.'” No one ever wants to hear that. But it all turned out fine.
Ellen wrote about a missing child, too: herself. “I grew up in a chaotic household, and leaving the house to go anywhere was mayhem. We were always desperately late, and my parents were what I’ve since learned is politely termed dysregulated. They also possessed a skewed religiosity and attended the Assemblies of God, which worshipped with fervour in the Cambridge Senior Citizen’s Hall. One Sunday, we were to attend an evening service at the AOG. I decided to skip the family drama and get myself to church independently, simply wanting to arrive on time.” A search party was launched but it all turned out fine. “Mr Ridley (who ran the hardware shop in town and was a friend of my father) saw me, a preschooler walking alone at dusk. He got me into his car and drove me home … No one got to church that night.”
Good stories. But the more affecting entries came from readers who wrote about missing adults. I loved this rural gothic, from Antonia.
“Our neighbour at the time rang at eight o’clock on a winter’s evening saying her husband hadn’t come home yet. They were deer farmers and there was a slight edge to her voice regarding the stag paddock. Of course we rugged up and headed out. Other neighbours met us at the stag paddock gate – he was no-where to be found. We trudged out towards the coastal paddocks, undulating old sand dunes now covered with Kikuyu, sudden shallows where the wind had burrowed in and lifted the sand creating dips and depressions. We spread out, calling, shouting, someone had brought a whistle which they blew stridently. Then we heard the longed for answer. Lying in one of the shallows, back broken, his spirit nearly broken with the pain and cold, he was so grateful and happy to be found he mercifully fainted.”
And then there was this miniature epic, a life lived as a mystery all contained in 80 words, from Kelly. She wrote, “In 1923 a man went missing in Montreal. He went to work as usual, said goodbye to a colleague and walked the other way. His wife reported him missing. In 2017 a woman in Australia matched a family photo with one on someone else’s family tree. It was the missing man. He had gone to England and married again under another name. He had started out in Barbados where the family goes back to the 1600s. Found and busted, granddad.”
I wrote back to her, “Your grandfather, do you mean?”
She replied, succinctly, “Yes my grandfather the bigamist.”
Good premise for a novel.
Many thanks to everyone who entered the contest to win Anne Cleary’s novel. The winner will be announced on Friday.
The Nowhere Boy by Anne Cleary (Allen & Unwin, $37.99) is available in bookstores nationwide.
