The Year of Fog

I picked this book up brand new at a bargain counter in a grocery store. I bought $50 worth of groceries that day. This book was the most nourishing item in the shopping basket. Abby Mason [the narrator], a young photographer engaged to Jake, the father of charming 6-year-old Emma, 'loses' the child one foggy day at a San Francisco beach. One moment the girl is there-- the next moment she's gone. The book is the story of everyone's search for the missing child-- especially Abby's search. (The search takes almost a year-- hence the book's title.) But while everyone else is looking in every possible physical nook and cranny of the area, Abby's search takes her into her own past, into the convoluted pathways of memory, into her knowledge of photography, into an exploration of psychology and philosophy worthy of the great literary artists of our time and of all time. [Why this writer isn't classed right alongside the likes of Amy Tan, Joyce Carol Oates, and Alice Walker is a total mystery to me-- she's that good.] Some reviewers have classified Year of Fog as "Women's Lit," whatever that's supposed to be. I hasten to tell you, it's not just for women. Any halfway or better educated man who isn't addicted to Westerns or Tom Clancy to the exclusion of everything else will find this enthralling and even heart-pounding at times. I literally could not stop reading. The solution to the 'mystery' is absolutely unpredictable, no matter what you think it's going to be. The characters, especially Abby, will stay with you forever. It's one of the best books I've ever read, and I've read thousands.

This is a book about a parent's worst nightmare. Unlike similar books, such as Beth Gutcheon's Still Missing, this book goes beyond the facts of a girl who disappears. The father, Jake, sticks to a police-procedural approach in trying to locate his daughter, sending out flyers, offering a reward, setting up a web site, appearing on television and radio. But Abby, Jake's fiance, feels responsible for the girl's disappearance and takes a much more imaginative approach. The themes of the book are presented through Abby's eyes. One is memory, recall of details, hypnosis, looking for clues that might have been overlooked. Abby and her friend Nell study the workings of memory, amnesia, the inability to forget. Another is the passing of time and the artificiality of time. The police say the longer a child is missing, the less likely he/she will turn up alive. Jake accepts this, Abby studies what time may mean. Abby is a photographer and looks for clues in her pictures. Jake and Abby are in agony, and I feel the story is realistic, including what eventually happens. There are different possibilities when a child disappears. She may eventually be found alive, like Elizabeth Smart in Utah. That doesn't mean she's undamaged. She may be found dead, like the child of one of the characters in a support group in the book. A child may be dead, but it can turn out there was no abduction, like the case of two boys in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last year. After a nationwide search, the boys were found accidentally drowned in McGovern Park lagoon in their own neighborhood. And then there are the children who are never found and the family never knows what happened. Jake wants closure, Abby refuses to give up. Although some people think the book is slow moving, time could really drag for parents in this situation. I couldn't put the book down and found it interesting up to the end. I think this could turn out to be one of the best books of the year.

Love, landscape, desire, loss, fear, and San Francisco: Richmond binds these ingredients into a cake at once rich and finely-grained, sweet but never cloying. What pulls you in first is the voice: "Here is the truth, this is what I know ..." But The Year of Fog is more than beautifully written; it is almost cruelly suspenseful. The night I buried myself in The Year of Fog, I had to skip ahead and read the ending (and what an ending--satisfying and surprising) in order to get some sleep. Full disclosure: Richmond was my writing instructor several years ago. I was surprised to read an essay by her in the San Francisco Chronicle commenting that after her first novel she didn't think she would write another. I am already waiting for her next haunting story.

Like several of the other readers here, I could not put this book down. My book club is reading The Year of Fog for this month's meeting. Typically, I dip into our chosen book now and again, and rarely finish. Not so for The Year of Fog; I devoured it in a few short days--and loved it. Michelle Richmond writes a beautiful, evocative story set in the San Francisco she clearly knows well and loves. She dances elegantly amongst themes of love and loss and interweaves them with compelling sections on memory and photography. I highly recommend this book!

Before Michelle Richmond brings Abby's search to find the lost Emma to an ending that is pitch perfect, she takes us on a poetic journey not just through San Francisco and Costa Rica, but also through the meaning of memory, the impossibility of forgetting, and the struggle to push on and make lives for ourselves. This beautifully written page-turner is a must read!