The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Australian author Felicity McLean has been incredibly popular this year. It begins when our narrator Tikka returns to her suburban home in Sydney. There she's forced to recount the summer of 1992 and the disappearance of the Van Apfel girls during their school concert.
Tikka Molloy was eleven years old at the time and the Van Apfel family (with three daughters) were neighbours. Tikka and her older sister were friends with the Van Apfel girls and their disappearance shocked the local community at the time.
The writing is evocative and atmospheric, and managed to capture Tikka's childhood with every ice cream, school project and ride in her parent's car. Even the simplest scenes like walking to school or a sleepover took me right into the heart of the story while also making me feel incredibly nostalgic.
I enjoyed the coming-of-age elements and the descriptions of the girls, including the dynamics between the two families and the sibling relationships between them.
Where I had a few issues however is that the story is not linear.
Similarities have been made to The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides and I can see why. The Lisbon girls (from The Virgin Suicides) and Van Apfel girls are both raised in strictly religious households. The narrators in both novels are haunted and slightly obsessed by the loss of the girls.
Similarities have also been drawn to Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay in that several girls disappear into the Australian bush in the harsh summer and only one comes back. While comparisons like these do attract interest to the book and presumably boost sales, these links are somewhat tenuous in this case.
What made this a 3 star read for me was the unresolved ending. I can guess what led up to the girl's disappearance but this is never confirmed. The details of their disappearance are unsolved in the beginning of the book and remain so at the end which drove me nuts.
I'm also not okay with people withholding information from the police, even years after an event.
The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean is recommended reading for those who enjoy an Australian coming-of-age novel with a mystery at its heart.
In the spirit of 'if you like this, you'll also like this' fans of this novel should check out The Yellow House by Emily O'Grady.
Carpe Librum!
A thoughtful review, I too was a little frustrated by the lack of answers.
ReplyDeleteThanks Shelleyrae.
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