Re: JCO: Mother, Missing

Hi Cyrano

Yes, the novel is about the search and trial to apprehend the mother's
murderer (which isn't really giving anything away since the book summary
says something similar.) But it's not a mystery at all who did it. It is
just about that grieving process. She dedicates the novel to her mother and
has described how personality wise her mother was almost identical to the
one in the novel.

Ladder of Years is one of my favorite novels, but I hadn't thought about the
connection. Maybe Oates did have that book in mind when writing this.

best,
Eric

>From: Cyranomish@aol.com
>Reply-To: jco@usfca.edu
>To: jco@usfca.edu
>Subject: Re: JCO: Mother, Missing
>Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2005 07:27:27 EDT
>
>Hi, Eric. I misread the American title Missing Mom as an mystery novel too
>and was expecting something along the lines of JCO's recent young adult
>novel
>Freaky Green Eyes, about a girl whose mother is found murdered. But
>Missing
>Mom can also be about grieving for one's deceased mother. (JCO's mother
>passed
>away recently: I thought some of that was reflected in The Falls). The
>British title, however -- Mother, Missing -- does suggest a mystery or a
>police
>procedural novel.
> On a lighter note, Ann Tyler's novel Ladder of Years is about a mother
>who runs away from home. Her husband and grown children place a Mother
>Missing
>ad in the local newspaper. The family's ad clearly indicates that they
>don't
>know the missing woman very well and can't even agree upon what she looks
>like
>or what she was wearing the day she disappeared. (JCO wrote an Ann Tyler
>appreciation recently)
>Cyrano
>
>I was just browsing in Waterstone's in London at lunch and surprised to see
> the new Joyce Carol Oates novel out here under a slightly different
>title.
> Missing Mom is called Mother, Missing in the UK. I wonder why they
>decided
> to change it. It sounds more like a mystery novel this way I guess, but
> that's really not what the content is. There isn't much of a mystery.
>It's
> more about the process of grief and coming to terms with how to exist
> parentless in the world (even if you are already an adult)
> >>
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