When Cynthia Bigge was fifteen her parents and older brother disappeared from the family home overnight, silently and without a trace. Twenty-five years on, she’s still haunted by the loss and convinced that they may still be alive. Hypervigilant about her own daughter’s safety, Cynthia watches for signs of her family all around. When she participates in a sensationalist TV program, hoping that it will help someone remember a vital detail, or even stir her family to contact her, odd things start to happen – a hat just like her father’s appears on the kitchen table, notes arrive in the house, and Cynthia sees the same brown car in the street. Her husband is supportive but grows increasingly concerned. Are these events real, or is Cynthia losing her mind. What did happen that night? And why was Cynthia spared?
All these questions would be considerably more suspenseful if it were not for the periodic insertion of two-page, italicised discussions between two unnamed characters who clearly know what happened and are involved in the current drama. The novel gains nothing from this device, which deviates from the rest of the novel’s first person narration from Cynthia’s husband Terry’s perspective. What it loses, however, is significant – a substantial amount of suspense and quite probably (I can’t rule out guessing the motive anyway) the reason for the initial disappearance.
The novel’s not without its redeeming features – I particularly likes the sections with alleged psychic Ceylon, and the conflict for Terry is delicately portrayed. It’s just that so much of the point of the book, the suspense of not only what happened but whether Cynthia’s (consciously or not) behind the contemporary events, and possibly even the original disappearance, is so heavily eroded by the third-person sections that No Time for Goodbye loses almost all its oomph.
The ending is a little convoluted but satisfying, complete with growth and a tear-jerking conclusion, but next time Barclay would do better if he refrained from undermining his own good writing. - Alex
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