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FROM THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE WEDDING PEOPLE
Sally Holt has always been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally's questions about life, about love and about Billy Barnes, the high school basketball star who runs the refreshment stand at the local pool. Billy's unfathomable, otherworldly cool puts him on a different planet - until a tragedy leaves Sally's life forever intertwined with his.
Opening in the early nineties and charting almost two decades of shared history and missed connections, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is a dazzlingly unconventional love story that brims with unexpected moments of joy.
THE ACCLAIMED SECOND NOVEL FROM ALISON ESPACH, NOW PUBLISHED IN THE UK FOR THE FIRST TIME.
'Heartbreaking and funny, often in the same sentence'
Claire Lombardo
'An immensely talented writer . . . deeply moving, always excellent'
Emily St. John Mandel
'Tender, eloquent and wise, this is an intensely beautiful book by a supremely gifted writer'
Karen Thompson Walker
'Unputdownable, insightful, funny and emotionally profound'
Rufi Thorpe
'This is truly a novel like no other'
Joanna Rakoff
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"In Alison Espach's hands, a teenage girl on the cusp of understanding, a dazzling older sister, and a small Connecticut town become a beautifully described world filled with characters I wanted to meet, characters I still think about. Their trials and tribulations and adolescent longing and awkwardness; their love for each other--it all felt amazingly real. Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is the rare kind of book that made me both laugh and cry. It is hilarious and moving and deeply felt, and I was sad when it ended." - Anton DiSclafani
"Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is heartbreaking and funny, often in the same sentence--a deeply felt, finely wrought, and highly satisfying novel. Alison Espach has created a family whose every sorrow, joy, and idiosyncrasy is utterly, vibrantly real." - Claire Lombardo
"Oh how I loved this novel! Alison Espach masterfully examines the effects of devastating loss with enormous wit, charm, and intelligence. This is truly a novel like no other." - Joanna Rakoff
"Espach is an immensely talented writer, and her prose unfolds with a devastating lightness of touch. This novel is deeply moving, always excellent, and often unexpectedly funny." - Emily St John Mandel
"Unputdownable, insightful, funny, and emotionally profound. A book that swirls and glitters with strangeness and delight, as much a portrait of grief as a love story, both love and grief hinging on the ways we negotiate with things we cannot control, how we sit in the cockpit of the self, what we dare to share with others and what remains ineffable. Gorgeous." - Rufi Thorpe
"Tender, eloquent, and wise, this is an intensely beautiful book by a supremely gifted writer." - Karen Thompson Walker
"Writing from a black hole, 'soundless and windless and without gravity, ' Alison Espach has alchemized unimaginable tragedy into a story that's deceptively funny, tender, and ultimately life-affirming. Novels like this are what the art form is for." - Teddy Wayne
"Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is heartbreaking and funny, often in the same sentence--a deeply felt, finely wrought, and highly satisfying novel. Alison Espach has created a family whose every sorrow, joy, and idiosyncrasy is utterly, vibrantly real." - Claire Lombardo
"Oh how I loved this novel! Alison Espach masterfully examines the effects of devastating loss with enormous wit, charm, and intelligence. This is truly a novel like no other." - Joanna Rakoff
"Espach is an immensely talented writer, and her prose unfolds with a devastating lightness of touch. This novel is deeply moving, always excellent, and often unexpectedly funny." - Emily St John Mandel
"Unputdownable, insightful, funny, and emotionally profound. A book that swirls and glitters with strangeness and delight, as much a portrait of grief as a love story, both love and grief hinging on the ways we negotiate with things we cannot control, how we sit in the cockpit of the self, what we dare to share with others and what remains ineffable. Gorgeous." - Rufi Thorpe
"Tender, eloquent, and wise, this is an intensely beautiful book by a supremely gifted writer." - Karen Thompson Walker
"Writing from a black hole, 'soundless and windless and without gravity, ' Alison Espach has alchemized unimaginable tragedy into a story that's deceptively funny, tender, and ultimately life-affirming. Novels like this are what the art form is for." - Teddy Wayne
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