BOOK REVIEW                               FICTION
MISSING MOM
AUTHOR: LYNN SLAUGHTER

Every moment of association with one's mother is momentous. Snapping this bond sends everything into a tizzy. Without mincing words, the book catches up with high drama. The prologue puts you literally on tenterhooks. What was supposed to be the waltzing moments of a young dance trainee turns nightmarish when Noelle finds her mom is not reachable or rather untraceable and is later told about the abominable mishap. Along the trajectory of ballet, readers pass through one present-day medium and the other that existed 19 years back. At the same time, the synergy of these two voices of two female high school seniors augments each other to make this coming-of-age account. The most unlikely events and dead ends seize the readers.

The author Lynn Slaughter chooses a distressed teen daughter to narrate the predicament of her mom having gone missing making the account draw reader empathy and heartfelt concern. Lynn having been an impassioned danseuse pirouettes her novel through dance rubrics and themes as the alluding trope to redeem this occasion with subtle enmeshed outcomes engross readers. However, the gracefulness of pristine dance turns into danse macabre with gruesome turn of events. The prancing move in petit allegro provides succor to a young teen reeling under lost mom to take up cudgels to ferret out her sudden disappearance by donning the mantle of a novice detective. “While the father said, ‘We may never know what happened to your mom..’I gritted my teeth. ‘I don’t know. But no one else seems interested in finding out what really happened … so it’s down to me..I was determined to unravel the mystery of what happened to my mom.’ Her failures pose no deterrence to her steely resolve. Noelle Ehrlich still in her teens soon emerges as an astute sleuth putting cops to shame. Readers find the surge of events escalate making the urge to find the mystery woman of the missing mom. The infamy of dumb cops lives on yet again. Detective Lieutenant Bukowski is no different.

The book moves through some trenchant tragic moments and how young children come to terms with life vacillating between their own dad and stepdad with no mother to cuddle the young one. Noelle yet again becomes motherly to her young sister reading out all those bedtime stories like Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet and helping her with daily routine. Amidst exasperation, Noelle lets out, “This is a nightmare, I cried. I didn’t even know what to put on the top of my list of things to worry about… And now my stepdad might dump my little sister and me off at my dad’s.” Their filial interaction wins every reader’s heart.

The travails of estrangement and oppression of the missing mom are heart-rending. Recounting her voice stretching back to 19 years snowballing into claustrophobia and disruptions in human relations, she alludes to ‘Why the caged bird sings’. Lynn Slaughter makes a poignant scene of the vagaries of matrimonial disruptions and its growing chasm on what could have befallen the missing mom saying, “Married life isn’t exactly what I expected..Every few days, I get so lonely I walk the three miles downtown and go to the library…When he gets home from work, he insists on checking my… what a control freak he was.” Her aspirations were stifled by male chauvinism. Lynn Slaughter ropes in Sylvia Plath by questioning “What did you think of The Bell Jar?” and the missing mom admits it as “Brutally honest,..Strong writing.” However the author introduces another clause to give it a new twist- “that came out sixty years ago, and we live in different times now.”

The book is a dovetail puzzle of human emotions and relationships. The mother’s identities keep emerging to rethink the ensuing chain of outcomes. How far is the mother justified in abandoning her babies? Lynn sloshes several integral questions inherent in this episode. Both men and ideas change over time and clime. However, the umbilical pull is recurrent. Noelle admits, “My chest ached. The plan had always been to delight Mom, my number one cheerleader, with any dancing success I achieved.”Incidentally, the mother and a daughter have a similar fate for no fault of theirs. The book runs on these two strands of thrill and empathy. It’s not just hairpin turns of events but everything takes a toss veering away from what anyone can conjecture from reading existing thrillers doing rounds.

The paradigm of dance molds the storyline. During dinner even Whitney, still a kid asked Ravi to, “Lift me up, like I’m a ballerina’. For Noelle: “Maybe Scotch was to Greg what dance meant to me. A way to survive.” Lyn Slaughter administers psychosomatic panacea to Noelle with the dancing regimen. The world is too much upon Noelle. Teen love is brewing in the dance studio giving her the grit and gumption to survive and pursue fact-finding. A dance studio like a kaleidoscope conjures up dynamic fluidity to evoke the niceties of sensibilities and perceptions for mitigating distress and combat imperiled hopes. The virtuosity of the modern ballet ‘Cast a Wistful Eye’ becomes a surefire in spilling out its nitty-gritty and allusion it bears with Noel Ehrlich and Ravi Patel ironing out all societal discords to give way to furtive dalliance of sorts. Tender love gets implanted in their teen hearts, providing the gusto to unravel the mystery.

The book posits a strong multicultural social message of adversity catching us unaware and the ensuing irreparable damage incurred yet life goes on unabated. The good, bad, and the ugly coexist side by side, one popping up while the other popping out. Male frailties like chauvinism and perversion from unsuspecting quarters take their toll. There’s a social message for takeaway.  A life may have many facets to it. Some toxic sequel may filtrate out too. But who’s to be blamed? Subtle outcomes crisscross to question the sanctity of familial bonds and  perturbations skulking therein showing life is a curate's egg.

Missing Mom is a groundswell of young adult mystery serenaded with a sweet love story. A new stream of emotions and thrill underlines a rare mystery leaving no escape for readers. There is marvellous vivisection of the human psyche: of children, men, and women. There’s a caveat for readers over stomach clenching that happens too often in the thriller to render it contagious upon readers; to be taken in a lighter vein.

‎Publisher: Fire and Ice Young Adult Books

Print length ‏ : ‎ 292 pages