Elevrecension: Nobody is ever missing

Nobody is ever missing by Catherine Lacey

The book is a realistic fiction which came out in 2014 and takes place in New York and New Zealand. It’s written in presence in the perspective of the main character. The book has been praised by many news articles and has also won some prizes like ”Late Night Library Debutlizer”.

’’Nobody is ever missing’’ is about Elyria and her unraveling marriage with her husband. She decides one day that this is not what she wants so she packs her bags and takes a flight to New Zealand where her journey to find herself begins. Neither her husband nor her family knows why she's left or if she’s coming back.

The main character is Elyria, she is a 29 year old woman who’s quite skinny and has long uncontrollable brown hair. We don’t get to read much about other characters since they are only in small parts of the story. We do get to read some about her alcoholic mother who never took good care of her or her sister Ruby. We learn that Ruby commited suicide and the memory of her haunts Elyria. Through this traumatizing experience Elyria meets her husband Charles who cares deeply for her but yet he does not want her back because she betrayed the trust they had for each other, but the question is if there ever was any trust to begin with.

I chose this book as I choose most of my books, by the cover. I thought it was pretty and I was interested by the title. The book did not live up to my expectations though, I was bored the whole way through and I was never thrilled to read more. I just disliked the way she dragged things out and never stopped, I also didn't like Elyria. She was just so unlikeable, she whined about everything and was just so self absorbed and didn't care about anyone but herself. I get that the book is about depression, how it’s always there and it’s okay sometimes but you always end up feeling the same. Like there's a void inside you needing to be filled with meaningless things that in actuality, don't make you any happier. Elyria actually expresses this feeling as her “wildebeest”.

The language Catherine uses I believe is for older and more mature people who understand her peculiar and eccentric way of describing and writing, I just got tired and wished the book would finish already.

Here's an example of how she dragged things out to the point of confusion where I just didn't understand what she was trying to say anymore:

​“And you may have wanted children in the past I may have wanted to want children children in the past and maybe you only wanted to want but disguised that wanting to want as a simple wanting, and perhaps I just wanted children but couldn’t manage to admit it as anything other than a wanting of want because I feared the burden of a plain want.”


I would give the book 1/10 because I didn't like the main character, the story or the way Catherine wrote. I would probably recommend the book to older women and men around 20-40 years of age mostly because of the language, but also because of the story and how it almost never progresses into something exciting or interesting that makes me want to keep reading it.

Book review by Ebba Bennich 9H2