Lois has a secret she
can't shake off: She was one of two young girls abducted by a man and hidden in
a forest cabin for weeks when they were 12 years old. Now 29, she's mined the
ordeal for a novel, safely hiding herself behind her pseudonym. But now that
her novel is about to become a movie, her calm, well-ordered life as an author
and English professor (with a specialty in abduction stories, natch) begins to
fall apart. An increasingly stalker-ish student seems to have discovered her
past, and one of the actresses in the movie, whose birth name is Carly May but
who goes by Chloe, turns out to be Lois' fellow abductee. If that last twist
seems a touch convenient, don't worry: Mitchell knows what she's doing. As she
patiently parcels out details about the abduction, she explores the horrifying
yet magnetic grip such traumas have on our lives and imaginations. Why does
Chloe take comfort in revisiting her brutal past? Why can't Lois resist keeping
close to her stalker, mining him for inspiration for her novel's sequel? "Once we've collapsed the past and the present, the truth and the
fictions, we will peel the layers apart, organize the pieces and put ourselves
back together," Lois writes.
Gone Girl has primed us for female leads with dark pasts,
but Mitchell's novel is an original and haunting page-turner about the
emotional shocks that come with—literally—rewriting your
history.