Missing Persons by Nicci Gerrard (Penguin)
by Patrick O'Connor
THE Hopkins are a typical middle class family who live in sleepy East Anglia.
They enjoy a normal life with three teenage children, two girls and a boy and their existence seems to be easy, respectable and normal.
The story begins as parents Isobel and Felix see their son Johnny off to university in Sheffield. On the face of it, he appears a happy, contented boy and Isobel, a primary school teacher and Felix, a university academic, are very proud of him.
But after a few weeks Johnny disappears without any warning or hint of a problem. The police regard him as a missing person, his friends and fellow students are dumbfounded.
Nicci Gerrard refuses to take the reader on a journey into what happened to Johnny, instead she focusses totally on the impact of his disappearance on his family and friends.
The first part of the book is devoted to Isabel's reaction and later on the microscope is put on Felix and Johnny's younger sister Mia.
During the course of this, Johnny's birthdays come and go, there are domestic traumas within the Hopkins family, relatives die, children are born, there are funerals and weddings. Felix has a breakdown and Johnny's parents' marriage is put under enormous strain.
Gerrard also examines the plight of the homeless, especially in London, as a search party of family and friends is put together to an attempt to track Johnny down.
There is a resolution in the final chapters but that something best left for the reader of this enthralling and emotional novel to discover.