Find Me Gone

August 20, 2018
Belgian author Meuleman’s fascinating, multilayered debut shifts between countries and time periods. After the miscarriage of a much-wanted child, Hannah, a successful society columnist for a high-profile New York fashion magazine, is desperate to change her life. She leaves her husband, quits her job, and moves from Greenwich Village to Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. Her plan is to write a book about Agatha Christie, Barbara Newhall Follett, and Virginia Wolfe: three writers who “fought their battles, swam against the current, and then disappeared one day.” Her research into why these women chose to walk away from their lives stirs up turbulent memories. It seems that her beloved authors are “dragging her back to places she needs to forget. All the way back to” Bachte-Maria-Leerne, the little Belgian town where she grew up. Meuleman skillfully reveals, bit by tiny nuanced bit, the story of Hannah and her best friend, Sofie, who likewise disappeared one day long ago in Bachte. This intelligently written psychological thriller provides much food for thought. Agent: Cecile Barendsma, Cecile B Literary.

August 15, 2018
Belgian journalist Meuleman draws on the lives of famous female authors as she weaves through the past and present in this unpredictable and suspenseful debut novel.In 1996, a young girl named Sophie disappears from a small Belgian village. This fact torments Hannah, Sophie's best friend and Meuleman's protagonist. In 2014, Hannah walks away from her glitzy life in New York City: "What makes a successful columnist, adored by a blond Adonis like Boy, decide to abandon her fabulous apartment and bid farewell to...well, just about everything?" Her friends are worried and her editor thinks she's committing "career suicide," but Hannah is sick of "her tributes to the fake and frothy." She moves to Bushwick and begins writing a book about the lives of three writers who disappeared: Agatha Christie, Barbara Follett, and Virginia Woolf. "They are more than just writers," Hannah contends when confronted by the potential insignificance of her biographical work. "They fought their battles, swam against the current, and then disappeared one day. Just like the twelve-year-old girl who vanished from a Belgian village. A girl she knew better than anyone." Meuleman slowly spools out the details of a secret that haunts Hannah's past, the chapters jumping from 2014 New York to bits of the book Hannah is writing (some of the most interesting parts here) to scenes from Hannah's little Belgian hometown in the 1990s--all seemingly disparate tales, but the connections becomes clearer as the book unfolds. It's a plucky effort and at times takes on more than it can chew, but it will entice readers looking for something to keep them guessing until the end.An engaging novel that shines a light on the pain some women are forced to bear.

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September 1, 2018
Is it possible to outrun your past? Hannah leaves a lucrative position writing for a glitzy Manhattan magazine to move to a small, unfurnished place in Brooklyn, where she hopes to write a book about Agatha Christie, Barbara Follett, and Virginia Woolf, whose struggles with success led to each author disappearing for a time. Hannah's research stirs up memories of another set of disappearances that took place almost 20 years earlier in small-town Belgium. Growing up, Hannah and her friend Sophie did everything together, cautious in the wake of the recent abductions of local school girls. Now, a popular new friend causes a rift, building until the night Sophie leaves a party and is never seen again. A dark atmosphere permeates journalist Meuleman's debut, as Hannah falls further into the shadows, facing the possibility that she may never escape the losses that define her life. Parallel stories taking place 18 years apart and excerpts from Hannah's book glimpsing into the lives of the disappeared authors result in a crooked structure perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn and J.P. Delaney.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)