Alexandra, Gone

February 8, 2010
McPartlin (Pack up the Moon
) builds a thin novel around a missing person and the music she adored. After 36-year-old Alexandra Kavanagh disappears while running an errand in Dublin, her bereft husband, Tom, begins a small but determined effort to find her until a chance encounter with Jane Moore, Alexandra’s childhood friend, helps Tom to galvanize his search efforts. With assistance from Jane’s artist sister, Elle, and Web designer Leslie, Tom and Jane mount a national campaign, but as the search turns up dead end after dead end, the quartet finds that life continues apace: Jane and Elle resolve traumas and grievances, Leslie reaches out to new friends, and Tom learns to let go of his grief. Although McPartlin’s sense of humor helps these unlikely bonds of friendship to come to life, the plot is light on the suspense and pathos one might expect from a missing-person story, and since Alexandra is often conveyed in such a roundabout way—often by use of her favorite song lyrics—her disappearance, while central, is at odds with her incidental presence.

April 15, 2010
When Toms lovely wife Alexandra disappears on the way to a concert, Tom is frantic and papers the city with fliers. At another rock show, Tom, carrying his box of fliers, finds himself stuck in an elevator with Jane, Alexandras old friend, during a power outage. Jane and Alexandra drifted apart when Jane got pregnant at 18, and now, horrified that Alexandra is missing, shes determined to help in the search. So Jane promptly enlists the aid of the other folks trapped in the elevator: her moody artist sister, Elle, and a reclusive Web designer named Leslie. Together they work to find Alexandra, posting fliers, setting up Web sites, and following leads, but they and their families discover that while theyve been trying to find Alexandra, their own lives have careened ahead in strange new directions without her. McPartlins fourth novel is a brutally candid mirror reflecting the puzzling way sorrow and happiness coexist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)