I just finished the book this morning and I have lots of thoughts and feeling.

It reminded me of The Virgin Suicides. Not in a bad way though. It has the same first person plural voice and a group of boys who are obsessed with sisters. The story begins with the disappearance of Nora Lindell one Halloween and the neighborhood boys' attempts to reconstruct her final moments. This is similar to the the Greek chorus narrative that Eugenides uses, but the boys in this case are not trying to actively solve the mystery. They are more like gossips, dissecting every new piece of information that comes their way. The first person plural voice makes Pittard's narrators seem like a chimera of teenage boys and the men they become as they hash out their fantasies about Nora and her sister, Sissy, and speculate on course of their own lives.

I really loved how the story unfolded like the boys really were Fates determining Nora's destiny. Was she murdered two counties over the night she disappeared or did she run away and live an amazing life? It reminded me of Doctor Who in a way too. Like the boys were fixed in time, but Nora and Sissy weren't. As long as no one knew what became of the sisters, their lives were full of endless possibilities. This also allowed the men to reflect on their lives, so the focus kept shifting from past to present to future.

Pittard does a beautiful job of creating the incestuous aspects of suburban life in the way that everyone knows each others business and the kind of hive mind that develops from growing up and being friends with the same group of people your whole life. At the same time, she gives life to the individuals in the group, like my personal favorite, the kid who names all his dogs after himself.

I'll leave off with perhaps the most striking thing about the book: just how much life Pittard is able to wring from a sparse 240 pages.