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Title: The Moment She Was Gone : A Novel by Evan Hunter ISBN: 0-7434-5948-2 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 2003 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.39 (31 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Hard to put down
Comment: I checked this book out on the basis of the author having written "Blackboard Jungle." I was not disappointed. Hunter, in spare, cogent style, offers a sensitive, realistic view of a condition difficult for families to face. The author covers various family member reactions such as denying, ennabling and defying.
Rating: 5
Summary: Evan Hunter is The Master at just everything he attempts
Comment: Mr. Hunter won me over for the umpteenth time with this one, given that I've been reading - and loving - for a good thirty years the work of this extraordinary author, both as Evan Hunter and as Ed McBain (I pride myself about not having skipped any title whatsoever in McBain's own nearly fifty-year-old 87th Precinct police procedural series, a never ending stream of genial and inventive writing which has been ripped off by virtually anyone, especially TV shows, without ever achieving results which can be remotely compared to its original brilliance).
The first Evan Hunter novel I ever read was Second Ending (1956), and it greatly affected my teenage years. I read it and re-read it so many times that my old paperback copy is by now nearly destroyed. The latest Hunter to grace my bookshelves is, of course, this melancholic, somewhat elegiac and yet achingly realistic-feeling gem, The Moment She Was Gone. I caught some intriguing analogies between these two Hunter masterpieces.
Both novels show us the deep sufferings of frail young people - in Second Ending it was twentysomething heroin addict/former brilliant jazz musician Andy Silvera; now it's thirtysomething schizophrenic/former brilliant student Annie Gulliver.
Both novels offer riveting and layered portrayals of a badly damaged yet sensitive person, once full of promises, caught in the titanic struggle of coping with the very essence of his/her sufferings as well as with the nostalgia for a past which can't return. Then again, we actually see all of that mainly through the eyes of a sort of chorus (Andy's friends there, Annie's family here), and especially through the eyes of the one single person (Bud Donato there, Annie's twin, Andy, here) whose soul is closest than anyone else's to the suffering, struggling one.
In both novels the result is staggeringly beautiful, and also - in the end - powerfully cathartic. At the end of their (and our own) respective emotional journeys, we find that our "guides" - Bud Donato there, Andy Gulliver here - have grown dramatically, becoming better beings, more open-minded ones, more understanding ones, and they have to thank for that none other than their "flawed" loved ones. This is a beautiful concept.
What also strikes me in The Moment She Was Gone is Evan Hunter's uncanny ability to faithfully - yet emotionally - portray the life of a schizophrenic person's family like it actually is in reality.
I've known two girls who were exactly like Annie Gulliver. One, the sister of a male schoolmate of mine, committed suicide many years ago, in her early twenties, by jumping out of a window. It wasn't her first suicide attempt. She was an incredibly brilliant student, just like her brother, my friend.
The other girl is luckily alive, even though for years she refused to take her medications and transformed her mother's life into a permanent nightmare; she was a former classmate of my sister, and she had what everyone initially defined just "an artistic streak" - she made jewelry just like Annie Gulliver did, she wrote poems, she was also as beautiful as an angel ...
I saw these two girls closely mirrored in Annie Gulliver's struggle with her own inner voices, as well as I saw their families closely mirrored in Andy Gulliver, his mother, his brother Aaron, his sister-in-law Augusta ...
Evan Hunter delivers here a perfect blend of realism, craft and - most of all - overwhelming humanity. A must-read, and five stars out of five.
Rating: 3
Summary: Everything about book is high quality,
Comment: Criminal Conversation by Evan Hunter is one of my favorite novels and in this book he shows the same writing and characterization that made me want to keep reading.
Annie is a bit crazy, and it is obvious to the reader. Unfortunately, no one in Annie's family has the guts to deal with it, except maybe her twin brother Andy from whom some details of Annie's past have been hidden to protect him.
Each story of Annie's past provides possible clues as to why she is crazy and each story reveals a bit about all the main characters as they all struggle in the present to find where Annie has ran off to this time.
Basically this novel is about Annie's family coming to terms with her craziness, and that covers about 208 pages. I believe Hunter could have added to this novel to make it better. This novel would have been a lot better if there had been a resolution to why Annie was crazy. Hunter definitely has the skill to throw in a plot twist about something dramatic in Annie's past that caused her to go insane, but he leaves us with a story of several people's lives and the book ends with them continuing to live. There really is no climax. I guess Hunter has earned the right to write whatever he chooses, but that still doesn't change the fact that this bare-bones novel could have been much better.
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Title: Fat Ollie's Book : A Novel of the 87th Precinct by Ed McBain ISBN: 0743410335 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Frumious Bandersnatch : A Novel of the 87th Precinct by Ed McBain ISBN: 0743250346 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Heckler by Ed McBain ISBN: 0743463072 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Mischief by Ed McBain ISBN: 0743463099 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Money, Money, Money : A Novel of the 87th Precint by Ed McBain ISBN: 0743410327 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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