Let me clarify cause I understand the title might be confusing! Whether dead, missing, or otherwise absent, I’m looking for examples of books that are about characters who don’t actually ever show up in the book directly (or if they do, they show up pretty late).
Like, character A died/went missing/etc., but is the main focus of the book and still influences the protagonist and their choices.
Bonus points if the absent character was the main character’s love interest.
Let me know if you have any ideas!
by mossue
5 Comments
Just to clarify, you’re NOT interested in something like The Lovely Bones where the main POV character is dead and not actually there witnessing what’s going on in the world.
I suggest Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng and Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok except I think the dead/missing characters do appear in the flashback chapters. It’s been awhile so I can’t recall exactly.
a brief history of seven killings, dracula, where’d you go bernedette, grendel, rebecca
also disappearing earth by julia phillips
maybe only sort of fits but the virgin suicides. the book is ‘told’ by the neighbour boys, so you see the girls from afar, but they’re the main characters only through their eyes
similarly we need to talk about kevin. kevin is there through his mother’s eyes in flashbacks but only briefly do we see him in the present
Waiting for Godot
Hunted by Darcy Coates; the whole premise is this girl goes missing in the woods so her brother and friends go looking for her. It’s also a split narrative with the policewoman given the case to investigate