Disappearing Act
A mother and daughter search for lost love and remembrances of things past.
LAST SEEN LEAVING
A Novel
By Kelly Braffet
Houghton Mifflin. 260 pp. $23
Last Seen Leaving begins and ends with car wrecks, but that violent coincidence is just one of several false leads in Kelly Braffet's muted thriller. At its opening, a young woman named Miranda is sitting next to her crumbled Nova somewhere in Pittsburgh after a bad night of drinking and sex. A middle-aged man in a silver Mercedes stops to offer a ride. "I can take you all the way home if you'd like," he says. "The company is nice. I spend a lot of time alone." They talk awkwardly. He likes her hair. He implies that he works for the CIA. Then Miranda notices, "That was the exit. You just missed it."
"Did I?"
Her friends never see her again.
Let's review, kids: Don't get in a stranger's car. Miranda's ominous encounter is so soaked with noir tones that her creepy driver even says, "You sound like someone in a crime novel." But the surprises in this novel always involve what doesn't happen: That night Miranda isn't killed. Or robbed. Or even touched. Instead, her good Samaritan drops her off in Lawrence Beach, Va., with $100 and some advice about how to start over under a new name. For a disaffected young woman who wants no commitments, no address, no questions, the situation is just right: good weather and an easy job cleaning rooms. The only downside is a local serial killer who's murdering cute co-eds, dyeing their hair and dumping them in the water.
But this isn't a beach slasher, either. Braffet's just toying with these clichés -- and us. Her previous novel, Josie and Jack , was a raging tale about a sister and brother on the run from their psychotic father. Now, she's after something more subtle -- possibly too subtle. Most of the story follows Miranda's mother, Anne, as she tries to find her estranged daughter. They haven't been close for years. Miranda always insisted on her right to remain silent. She scorned her mother's interest in meditation and healing crystals, but, disappointingly, the novel's emphasis on her New Age spirituality never develops.
By the time Anne tracks down her daughter's last address in Pittsburgh, Miranda's apartment has been abandoned for months. A nightmare for any parent, this is a repeat performance for Anne, whose husband vanished more than 20 years ago after a mysterious accident while working as a pilot for the CIA. (Suspect a connection with that earlier CIA reference? Don't get your hopes up.) She begins frantically trying to retrace what she thinks were her daughter's last days alive, all the while haunted by the trauma of her husband's unsolved disappearance.
If we weren't also following Miranda's shiftless life in Lawrence Beach, Anne's panicked search for her body in Pittsburgh might generate more suspense. But we know all along how misdirected this is, and Braffet's ultra-cool style gives us little else to munch on. Even that serial killer lurking in the background inspires only nagging anxiety, like Lyme disease or a tax audit. Instead, we're left watching the skewed paths of a mother and daughter mired in bitterness and sorrow over a man who died decades ago. The weight of their static grief smothers any tension here, making the novel pay for its exploration of character with its life. ·
Ron Charles is a senior editor of Book World.
