The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone

April 29, 2019
In McLean’s eerie debut, narrator Tikka Malloy can’t forget the summer of 1992: that was the summer her three best friends, the Van Apfel sisters—Hannah, Ruth, and the hauntingly beautiful Cordelia—walked off into the wild bushland near their Australian suburb, never to be seen again. In a winding novel of flashbacks and hidden memories, readers see Tikka, now a woman in her 30s who has since moved to Baltimore, unable to move past that one summer. Returning to Australia to care for her sister, Laura, who was recently diagnosed with cancer, Tikka navigates the shadowy past of her childhood. Through conversations with Laura, neighbors, and her parents, Tikka stumbles upon painful feelings of guilt, hidden secrets and scandals, and memories better left forgotten. McLean peels back the layers of one scorching Australian summer, revealing the dark secrets and lies hidden behind the cheerful facade of suburbia. This debut, part coming-of-age story and part crime thriller, is both forceful and unnerving.

The unsolved disappearance of three girls from their small town in Australia is recounted by 11-year-old Tikka Malloy, portrayed by Cat Gould. In a time shift, the adult Tikka remains haunted by guilt, as she and her older sister knew the girls were planning to run away yet never told anyone. Gould's native Australian accent lends a useful authenticity to the narrative, but the story requires that Tikka's childish ignorance also feel authentic. Gould's approach--to add an ungainly earnestness to her normal speaking voice--merely makes her sound less skilled at narration than she actually is. A better casting choice might have been someone already possessing a youthful voice or better capable of conveying one over extensive stretches of narration. K.W. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine