Bunkobons

← All books

Cover of Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

Buy on Amazon

From Alison Espach, author of the New York Times Editor's Choice novel The Adults, comes a dazzlingly unconventional love story for readers of Ask Again, Yes and Tell the Wolves I'm Home. The summer before Sally Holt starts the eighth grade begins as a gloriously uneventful one. It's full of family trips to the beach and long afternoons at the local pool with her older sister Kathy, which they mostly use as an excuse to ogle Billy Barnes, who works the concession stand there. A rising senior and local basketball star, Billy has been an unending source of intrigue for both girls since he jumped off the school roof in fifth grade, and their fascination with him is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common.…

Recommended by

"It wasn’t exactly a sudden disappearance, but fans of Alison Espach’s first novel, the wonderful The Adults, have had to wait 11 years for her follow-up. Good news: It’s more than worth it. Her second book follows Sally, a 28-year-old woman looking back on a year of her childhood in which her older sister was killed in a car crash. While the subject matter is obviously heartbreaking, Espach’s book is often quite funny, and the structure – it’s told in the second person – is fascinating. Espach once again proves that she’s a brilliantly talented author."
NPR Books We Love — 2022 · apps.npr.org
"Despite its tragic subject — grief over a teenage sibling's death — it's somehow very funny in between wrenching passages. I've reread the profound and moving final page several times the last few months."
By the Book: Teddy Wayne · nytimes.com