Every novelist needs a vibrant imagination. Judging by There's No Place Like Here (2007, Hyperion, New York, 417 pages), Irish author Cecelia Ahern has mental agility and powers of visualization second to none.
In a rare writing achievement, Ahern takes an ironically named protagonist, the tall Sandy Shortt, and each reader to an elusive place about which everyone wonders. But presumably no one travels there and returns to tell the tale.
Since childhood, Sandy has searched for missing objects. Then she dedicates her career to finding missing people. Uncannily, Sandy suddenly goes missing too. She faces the tall task of finding herself – and then maybe a way home.
“Perhaps this is why it happened to me. Perhaps because I had spent so many years turning my own life upside down and looking for everything, I had forgotten to look for myself.”
No victim of foul play, Sandy merely goes jogging in an unfamiliar forest and trots into a place that appears on no maps, a dimension full of vanished people and possessions. No matter who searches for them, remembers them, loves them or longs for their return, they can't get back.
“You see, there's nothing funny about being missing. I also quickly realized there's little difference between being missing and looking for the missing: every day I search. Same as I did when I was working. Only this time I search for a way back to be found.”
What kind of place is this odd “land of the missing”? Imaginative Ahern describes it in vivid detail, almost as if she'd been there herself. Surely not!
“It's cluttered with personal possessions: car keys, house keys, cell phones, handbags, coats, suitcases adorned with airport baggage tickets, odd shoes, business files, photographs, can-openers, scissors, earrings scattered among the piles of missing items that glisten occasionally in the light. And there are socks – lots of odd socks. Everywhere I walk, I trip over the things that people are probably still tearing their hair out to find. There are animals, too. Lots of cats and dogs with bewildered little faces and withering whiskers, no longer identical to their photos on small-town telephone poles.”
Just one man searches for Sandy. Increasingly desperate, Jack Ruttle wants her to find his missing brother and refuses to let her vanish so easily. Can Sandy return home? How badly will Jack disrupt his life? Do missing people find happiness? What about the troubled folks unable to stop searching? How and when do people ever really find what they seek in life?
“Sometimes people can go missing right before our very eyes. Sometimes people discover you, even though they've been looking at you the entire time. Sometimes we lose sight of ourselves when we're not paying enough attention.... We all get lost once in a while, sometimes by choice, sometimes due to forces beyond our control.”
Ahern wrote three earlier bestsellers -- PS, I Love You; Love, Rosie; and If You Could See Me Now – and co-created a popular TV sitcom, Samantha Who. From 1997 to 2008, her father, Bertie Ahern, was Ireland's prime minister. Despite such political success, his creative daughter probably thrives more at her job than he ever did at his.
Anyone who enjoys imaginative stories will take delight that Cecelia Ahern probably has many more to tell. She should write again about the fascinating land of the missing.
Approval rating: 72 per cent.
For more information: www.CeceliaAhernBooks.com or www.HyperionBooks.com.
(September 28, 2009)
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