Miss Me When I'm Gone

Starred review from June 25, 2012
Arsenault (The Broken Teaglass) offers a thoughtful reflection on country music, secrets, and relationships with her outstanding third mystery. Pregnant Jamie Madden, recently demoted “from health reporter to part-time night copy editor” at her budget-strapped newspaper, has been named the literary executor for her author friend, Gretchen Waters, who died from a fall down some stairs after giving a reading at a New Hampshire public library. Gretchen made her name with the bestselling Tammyland, a combination autobiography and study of the lives of country music stars such as Tammy Wynette, but she left behind an unfinished work with a darker tone. As Jamie looks into the manuscript, she finds information on the violent death of Gretchen’s biological mother, and wonders whether the author’s research into the past robbed her of a future. Arsenault’s lyrical, moving prose serves to make this more than just a compelling whodunit.

August 15, 2012
An uneven mystery about a murdered writer researching the suspicious death of her own mother. When Gretchen Waters dies, it appears to be a tragic accident: She falls down steep library steps after a reading of her memoir Tammyland. Her best friend, Jamie, a ripely pregnant journalist, is asked to become Gretchen's literary executor, which means she'll be organizing the vast quantities of notebooks, audio recordings and computer files that were to be Gretchen's next memoir. In this new memoir (Tammyland dealt with a divorce-inspired road trip merged with anecdotes of country music's tragic divas), Gretchen was focusing on the sad circumstances of her own childhood. Shelly was a teenager when she became pregnant with Gretchen, so her older sister, Linda, and her husband raised the baby. Gretchen would visit her mother on the weekends, until one day, Shelly was found beaten to death. Shelly's drunken boyfriend was acquitted, but everyone in the small New Hampshire town still thinks he did it. Jamie begins by simply organizing all the material, but when her house is broken into (the only things stolen are related to Gretchen) and it becomes clear that Gretchen's death was not an accident, she becomes an unlikely detective, attempting to piece together the last days of Gretchen's life. Arsenault builds the framework of a taut mystery--the present crime is directly related to the past--but the novel's pace is frequently slowed by excerpts from Tammyland and, to a lesser extent, Gretchen's field notes and rough drafts of the new memoir. Though Arsenault is playing with the idea of constructed realities, of multiple versions of truth, much is peripheral to the mystery and feels like a drag on the excitement being built as Jamie gets closer to the truth, and the murderer gets closer to Jamie. Flawed but affective.

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July 1, 2012

Best friends in college, Jamie and Gretchen drifted apart over the years, but Gretchen's sudden death leaves Jamie struggling to deal with the loss. When Gretchen's family asks Jamie to complete her new book, she discovers that her friend, a successful author, wasn't working on a second, breezy memoir but investigating the murder of her biological mother. As Jamie starts to ask her own questions, discrepancies between what she's hearing and what's been written leave her wondering whether Gretchen's death was truly accidental. VERDICT Multiple story lines that take place in multiple time periods and that focus on at least three of the main characters, plus chapters from Gretchen's published book and unfinished manuscript, all vie for attention, but should pose no problem for an alert reader. The characters come to life nicely, and subtle clues build to a surprising, satisfying conclusion. Readers who enjoyed Arsenault's first two novels (Broken Teaglass; In Search of the Rose Notes) and literary mystery authors like Megan Abbott and Laura Lippman will appreciate this slow-paced but thoughtful tale of how seemingly unimportant choices can bring unexpected consequences.--Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2012
Gretchen Waters achieved unexpected success with her memoir, Tammyland, about traveling in the footsteps of country music's greatest and most heartsick women. When she falls to her death outside a library in New Hampshire, her best friend from college, Jamie, is appointed literary executor. The very pregnant Jamie must contend with jumbled notes and incoherent drafts while struggling with her grief and guilt over the fact that she and Gretchen had grown apart. Gretchen's follow-up book, already late to the publisher, was not about the men of country music, after all; rather it was an exploration of the sad life and tragic death of her biological mother, Shelly. Jamie's obsession with the puzzle of Shelly's secrets enables her to ignore her own ambivalence towardor is it fear of?parenting. Chapters from Tammyland and Gretchen's unfinished work punctuate the narrative, and it is not hard to see how this New England woman found some solace in Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline. Arsenault (The Broken Teaglass, 2009; In Search of the Rose Notes, 2011) slowly unfolds the rich mystery of a mother and her daughter, disconnected and searching.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)