A Place Called Here – Cecelia Ahern

When Sandy Shortt was eight her neighbour and schoolmate Jenny-May Butler vanished without a trace from the smallest county in Ireland. Sandy was one of the last people to see the vivacious blonde, and it changed her life as profoundly as it did Jenny-May’s parents – in the past twenty years Sandy cannot rest if something is missing. Every sock, pen and roll of cellotape had to be feverishly sought, a compulsion that drove her parents to despair, thwarted her academic career, and has been the death knell of every tentative relationship – even the most sympathetic of lovers can only be patient for so long when an amorous encounter is aborted by the hunt for a pen cap, or lunches alone because something inconsequential needs to be found before Sandy can leave the house. Despite years of therapy, Sandy cannot shake the rightness of her quest to find every lost thing, and she works to find the hundreds of people who go missing in Ireland every year. That is until, while on the way to meet with a new client whose brother has been missing for a year, Sandy herself vanishes. Jack Ruttle, the client, knows Sandy is the only hope he has of finding Donal, but he can’t get anyone, not even her parents, any more interested in searching for her than in helping him find his baby brother. As for Sandy, she’s found her way to the place where lost things go – and now she’s searching for the way home, but it seems as though this is a one-way trip.
I borrowed A Place Called Here on the strength of my previous Ahern encounter, PS I Love You. This is a very different novel – a significantly more idiosyncratic cast, more complex plot and, at 387 trade paperback pages, substantially longer. However, in common with
Like Grace, the protagonist in Addition, the other novel I recently read about OCD, Sandy has her own take on her reality. Though she perceives her focus as dedication, there is no question that she has a variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which distances her from her bewildered parents and interferes with every aspect of her life. The underlying reason for it, more profound than the disappearance of Jenny-May, is satisfyingly explained toward the end of the book.
Also satisfying was the idea of finding everything that’s ever gone missing – for Sandy this includes homework her teacher didn’t believe she’d done, a beloved childhood companion, a diary, and all those unpaired socks; I couldn’t help but think of the wallets, coin purses, books (Telling Moments, where are you?), documents (I cannot possible have lost the AGM minutes, yet they just aren’t here) and favourite clothes (that white Swiss cotton wrap around skirt with brown wooden buttons) that have vanished from my own life. All in all, a unique and highly readable novel that combines psychological exploration, mystery, fantasy and understated romance in an exquisitely paced plot people by interesting and believable characters. A Place Called Here owes something to Alice in Wonderland, but it is a creation of its very own, and I look forward to seeing what else Ahern has written, particularly recent work. - Alex