Gone Again by Doug Johnstone
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Blurb: ‘It’s just to say that no-one has come to pick Nathan up from school, and we were wondering if there was a problem of some kind?’ As Mark Douglas photographs a pod of whales stranded in the waters off Edinburgh’s Portobello Beach, he is called by his son’s school: his wife, Lauren, hasn’t turned up to collect their son. Calm at first, Mark collects Nathan and takes him home but as the hours slowly crawl by he increasingly starts to worry. (Faber and Faber, 2013)
Rebecca Armstrong, The Independent
“As thrillers go, Gone Again’s plot isn’t fiendishly deceptive, or out to confound you at every point. Neither is it an against-the-clock adventure with the future of the world at stake. Its appeal lies in a certain quietness; that it is more about one family’s trauma than a larger, more explosive chain of events. It’s a very honest book about love and loss – the loss of youth, the loss of innocence, and the loss of trust. ”
Alice Wyllie, Scotland on Sunday
“ The book does build to a rather hammy conclusion with rather more gunshot wounds than you’d expect in Portobello, but there’s a heartbreaking sweetness to the relationship at its core; the one between Mark and Nathan.”
Marcel Berlins, The Times
“Doug Johnstone is particularly sharp and moving in describing the reactions of a six-year-old boy to his mother’s enduring absence. ”
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