The Fates Will Find Their Way
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3.7 • 132 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing. And the neighborhood boys she’s left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence.
As the days and years pile up, the mystery of her disappearance grows kaleidoscopically. A collection of rumors, divergent suspicions, and tantalizing what-ifs, Nora Lindell’s story is a shadowy projection of teenage lust, friendship, reverence, and regret, captured magically in the disembodied plural voice of the boys who still long for her.
Told in haunting, percussive prose, Hannah Pittard’s beautifully crafted novel tracks the emotional progress of the sister Nora left behind, the other families in their leafy suburban enclave, and the individual fates of the boys in her thrall. Far more eager to imagine Nora’s fate than to scrutinize their own, the boys sleepwalk into an adulthood of jobs, marriages, families, homes, and daughters of their own, all the while pining for a girl—and a life—that no longer exists, except in the imagination.
A masterful literary debut that shines a light into the dream-filled space between childhood and all that follows, The Fates Will Find Their Way is a story about the stories we tell ourselves—of who we once were and may someday become.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pittard leads the reader into a slew of possibilities spinning out from a 16-year-old girl's disappearance, in her intriguing, beguiling debut. After Nora Lindell goes missing on Halloween, stories about her disappearance multiply: she got into a car with an unknown man, she was seen at the airport, she simply walked away, she was abducted. Pittard dips into the points-of-view of various classmates to explore these possibilities and more. Perhaps Nora was murdered. One theory sends her to Arizona, where she raises twin daughters with a lover named Mundo, and another path leads her to a near-death experience in a cafe bombing in India. The story also outlines effects of the disappearance on Nora's family and classmates, who, even as they graduate, marry, and have children, never quite let go of Nora possibly to avoid their own lives. Though the truth about Nora remains tantalizingly elusive the reader is never quite sure what happened the many possibilities are so captivating, and Pittard's prose so eloquent, that there's a far richer experience to be had in the chain of maybes and what-ifs than in nailing down the truth.
Customer Reviews
The Lovely Bones Meets The Virgin Suicides
I love when I pick up a book and just fall right into it. I was a little wary when I picked up The Fates Will Find Their Way because the Goodreads rating is only so-so, and I try not to read anything that has less than a 3.5 star rating. But this one, with its little 3.18, was fantastic.
If you’re a fan of The Lovely Bones and The Virgin Suicides, then you will love this book. The basic premise is this:
At 17, a well-like girl named Nora Lindell went missing. Over the next couple of decades, a group of boys in her class concoct various stories about what may have happened to her. In some, she’s married and happy, and in others she’s a long-time dead. But in all of them, the details are vivid and the longing palpable. Even as they grow up, get married, and have kids, the boys from Nora’s childhood can’t seem to let her go.
What I love about this book is that it flows so well. I wouldn’t say that it’s stream-of-conciousness writing but it is definitely less structured. What is so amazing about it is that the imagination and intricate tales that the boys weave for Nora’s life are entirely plausible.
I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that I am still thinking about book. Nothing about it is shocking or loud, but its subtle and intricate details propel the book into the realm of palpability. And that, my friends, makes for a good read.
Highly unusual, strangely compelling
This character-driven novel is a highly unusual story about the disappearance of a teenage girl and the effect it has on a group of young men who knew herl. The mystery of Nora Lindell's disappearance remains unsolved, and the boy's attempts to make sense of the mystery moves the narrative along. Curiosity about Nora and her sudden disappearance on Halloween when she was sixteen permeates the lives of a handful of young men who knew her. Nothing much happens in the lives of these young men as they grow up, marry and have children, that is not interpreted, reflected upon, and incorporated into the mythology that the boys have conjured up about Nora Lindell's disappearance and her uncertain after-life. As speculation about Nora's whereabouts and life is carefully crafted into a full-blown tale of redemption and death, the boys who knew her likewise find their own meaning about the life-choices they have made.
The novel is strangely compelling in large part because of the melancholy tone that the author has woven into the narrative as deftly as she portrays the lives of these young men entirely through the the mythology they create about Nora Lindell.
Somber and thought-provoking
Very much in the style of Donna Tartt (especially The Secret History) and Tana French. I could hardly bring myself to stop reading when I needed to do something else - like eat or sleep hahaha! This novel elegantly explores how a single event can affect everyone for the rest of their lives and also examines the many different perspectives that are possible. I loved all the different possibilities that were presented. Definitely not a book that takes you from point A to point Z and resolves the mystery at the end!