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Loading... Departure Loungeby Chad Taylor
Thieves (11) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is the story of Mark Chamberlain, who is a small-time break and enter thief. He is obsessed with Caroline May, a classmate who disappeared without a trace while in high school. And, Mark isn't the only one obsessed with this case: there is Harry Bishop, the detective assigned to investigate it, Varina Sumich, another high school friend of Caroline's and even strangers who are inexplicably drawn to this story. This isn't a detective story....it's about how people deal with loss and about how one event can shape someone's life. It's a page-turner.....like the characters, I found myself wanting (needing) to know what happened to Caroline. At first, I was drawn into the story of Mark, who breaks into people’s houses and steals their possessions. When he was a teenager, his friend Caroline May disappeared without a trace; among the rumors was that she was one of the unidentified bodies aboard a sightseeing flight that crashed in the Antarctic. Where the book lost me was at the art show of a former classmate of theirs. Something about watching unexposed film. It was hard to get back into the book after that—people being absurdly moved by watching unexposed film (from the Antarctic searching after the plane went down) is just too pretentious for me! no reviews | add a review
"Smart, original, surprising and just about as cool as a novel can get... Taylor can flat-out write."--The Washington Post A young New Zealand woman mysteriously disappears. The lives of those she has left behind intersect and form a captivating latticework of odd coincidences and surprising twists of fate. This is contemporary urban noir at its stylish and intelligent best. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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At the start of this book, Mark's deadpan narration of his life of crime is mixed in with the story of Caroline's disappearance, it's easy to think that you're reading a thriller. But in fact, it's much more about grief and loss: since the disappearance, Mark has in a way been stuck in the "departure lounge" of the title: You feel safe while you're waiting to board the flight. There are empty couches and potted palms and soft music, and the people on the other side look calm. You are no longer in the country, but you haven't left. You're in limbo. What happens from then on in is neither real nor unreal, proven nor disproved.
And in a way, that was my problem with this book. The thriller parts of it were enjoyably unsettling. But Mark's character is hard to get a handle on. He's cold and emotionless - but perhaps that's a facade, covering deep feeling? - no, when describing his prison counselling he deliberately fakes hints of emotion to fit in to what the counsellor wants to hear. In the end, the story revolved around whether he had taken up this life of crime because he had never been able to deal with the grief of Caroline's disappearance, which turned out to be quite a slight thing to hang a story on.
Sample: Mrs Callaghan's TV was shimmering in the front room when I got home. I did the usual circuit of the house to check that everything was okay. And then I stopped, because it wasn't.
The lounge window was wide open. The paper ticket that had been tucked into the crack was now lying on the round outside.
I walked back up to the end of the drive. The other houses were still. The empty cars were parked along the street. The trees were dark thoughts.
I walked back to my own front door.
And knocked. ( )