Departure Lounge

Mark is a burglar - a pretty good one, but then he has nothing else to do. He lives on his own, surrounded by goods which he has not bought. One day, going through several flats in an apartment block, he enters the home of the parents of his old high school girlfriend - Caroline May, who disappeared one day, decades before, without a trace. Mark is unsettled by this, and even more so over the next few days as he is contacted by, or contacts, others who were involved in the case: the detective investigating the disappearance, Caroline's best friend.

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, show more 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. show less

A little bit edgy, a little bit mysterious, & a tinge bittersweet. To me, the forward-going thrust of the story is a noir(ish) crime novel, the backward-going thrust of the novel is a poignant & heartrending coming-of-age story. Both pieces woven together give you an unusual mix & unexpected routes vs. just a straight noir or crime novel. Taylor has an easy to read writing style that kept me turning the pages & stole a little piece of my heart by the end.

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!

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.