Reviewed by Rod McLary
An older woman suddenly goes missing – not at home, unreachable by phone, no warning to her daughter – what has happened? Not an unfamiliar trope for crime mysteries but The Missing Mother is no crime mystery. It is a psychological thriller which engages you from the very first line – ‘The day my father left my mother destroyed his paintings’ [1] – and doesn’t let go until the unexpected ending.
This novel is a fine example of domestic noir – that subgenre of crime fiction which explores the darkest secrets and betrayals within families. A dysfunctional family comprising Simone [the missing mother], Elspeth [the narrator of this story and a rather unreliable narrator at that and the older daughter] and Aoife [the second daughter] as well as Robbie the husband and father is the focus of this novel. Elspeth had suddenly left home some twenty years previously and rarely kept in contact with her mother and sister. She is now living in New York and had been working for Time Magazine until an incident which is never fully explained leads her to being sacked. Then she has a call from Aoife to say Simone is missing and can she please come home? Reluctantly she does so and stays with Aoife and her husband Drew and their two young daughters in Geelong while they and the police continue the search for their mother.
But Elspeth is a very troubled young woman – one who hated sleep, the process of lying down and listening to [her] brain recount the thousand and one dumb, awful, cruel or violent things that [she] may or may not have done [25]. The narrative as set out by Elspeth is interspersed by recent letters from Simone to her own mother and various friends which provide an alternative context to the events as described by Elspeth. This clever device introduces a sense of truth but one which proves to be a rather slippery concept. As Woody Allen once said All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we try to distort it.
The police become involved in the search for Simone and while they have their suspicions about what may have happened and who was responsible, they do not make too much progress in locating her. As the narrative progresses, disclosures are made which shift the perspective of the reader and challenge their understanding of the family dynamics and what may have or may not have occurred and how Simone’s disappearance can be explained.
Mali Cornish has crafted a psychological thriller like no other that I have read. The psychological twists to the narrative and the uncertainty about the reliability of the narrator create an ever-shifting perspective of the truth and the dynamics of this dysfunctional family. But that is not to say that the characters are without sympathy. Elspeth has an intelligent charm about her which is hard to resist and Aoife, while initially aloof and uptight, gradually softens and towards the end of the novel, the reader can understand why the sisters were so close as children and teenagers. And along the way, the reader will achieve an understanding about how the family arrived at this point.
The Missing Mother is highly recommended for all readers who enjoy intelligently written psychological family dramas.
The Missing Mother
[2026]
by Mali Cornish
Atlantic Books
ISBN: 978 1 9229 2813 9
$34.99; 416pp