
In "Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance," Alison Espach crafts a heartbreaking yet funny second-person narrative to a deceased sister that NPR and Chicago Tribune named among 2022's best books. "You'll wish you could read it again for the first time."
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Sally Holt was thirteen when her sister Kathy died in a car accident. One moment they were arguing over homework notes in Billy Barnes' car; the next, everything shattered against a tree. The accident left Sally physically unharmed but emotionally devastated, creating a wound that would shape her entire life. Through Sally's second-person narrative addressed to her absent sister, we experience grief in its rawest form - not as a neat five-stage process but as a messy, ongoing conversation with someone who can never answer back. The story unfolds across fifteen years, from the sacred rituals of sisterhood before the accident through the painful aftermath, revealing how a single moment can fracture a family and how love persists even when the people we love disappear. What happens when the person who taught you how to see the world is suddenly gone? How do you keep breathing when part of your heart stops?
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