Without Her A Novel

In this probing, Ferrante-esque novel, a disappearance of a life long friend becomes urgent and bewildering. When her old friend Hannah doesn’t show up at her family house in the south of France, everyone assumes that Claudia, who has known Hannah since their shared years at boarding school and Cambridge University, will know where she is, and what has happened. But as Claudia travels from the USA to France to help Hannah’s husband and children conduct their search, she is forced to deal with her old jealousy of Hannah, as well as her own relationship in the present with her French lover of thirty years, Alexandre. As events unfold, Claudia begins to wonder if Hannah and Alexandre may have had an affair and if that affair has had something to do with Hannah’s mysterious disappearance. In this exquisitely written, progressive and deeply thoughtful novel, Brackenbury ponders the bewildering question: if Hannah does not return, what will the lives of her friends and family be without her?