What Is Missing
Costanza Ansaldo, a half-Italian and half-American translator, is convinced that she has made peace with her childlessness. A year after the death of her husband, an eminent writer, she returns to the pensione in Florence where she spent many happy times in her youth, and there she meets, first, Andrew Weissman, an acutely sensitive seventeen-year-old, and, soon afterward, his father, Henry Weissman, a charismatic New York physician who specializes in ― as it happens ― reproductive medicine.
With three lives each marked by heartbreak and absence ― of a child, a parent, a partner, or a clear sense of identity ― What is Missing offers Costanza, Andrew, and Henry the opportunity to make themselves whole when the triangle resumes three months later in New York, where the relationships among them turn and tighten with combustive effects that cut to the core of what it means to be a father, a son, and ― for Costanza ― a potential mother.
Author: Michael Frank | Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Rating: 4 / 5
Big thanks to Michael Frank and FSG for sending a finished copy of this book my way in exchange for an honest review.
“Costanza wondered if all these other women in the waiting room had gotten themselves as wrong as she had gotten herself. What if, instead of reading, or texting, or hiding behind their earphones, they all started speaking, what a conversation that would be, what a chorus of regret and anguish! And anger, probably that too. And heartache. Not a chorus; an opera.”
What Is Missing is a lyrical, introspective look deep into the relationships and desires of a set of deeply flawed, deeply human people. The characters Michael Frank created drew me in and hooked me until the last page (and even then). I definitely enjoyed it.
The third-person narration mostly bounces between the perspectives of three characters: teenage Andrew, his father Henry, and a woman named Costanza whose famous author husband has recently died. The story opens in Italy, in Andrew’s perspective, just before he meets Costanza for the first time. Soon after they (literally) run into her in a museum, and Henry’s brought into their little world. Henry and Costanza hit it off immediately.
Three months later, in their home city of New York, the trio begin again: Costanza and Henry in a whirlwind of a relationship and Andrew caught in the middle. Soon, Costanza and Henry embark on a quest for a child, as Costanza has long wanted a baby and Henry is eager to begin a new chapter, a happier chapter, of his life. There’s a unique energy and relationship between Costanza and Henry, Costanza and Andrew, and Henry and Andrew. I don’t want to give away too much, but the conflicts that arise within each pair, and among the three of them together, are what charges the story forward and barrels it toward the ending with energy and intensity.
This story deals most strongly in the questions about the relationship between a parent and a child — before the child is born, as the child becomes an adult, and long after that child has become an adult. What makes someone a parent? What makes that relationship what it is? But also: What do our desires, choices, and actions say about us, and can we hold complex emotions at the same time, even while they exist in conflict with one another?
I was very nervous going into this novel about an experience that is so strongly rooted in womanhood — fertility and the journey to a hopeful pregnancy — written by a male author. I was glad to find that Michael Frank’s ability to capture all sides of a complex emotion, combined with (I imagine) some very good early readers who helped to ensure the voice felt authentic, helped Costanza’s character and emotions feel very real. It helps, too, that much of the story is told from Henry’s or Andrew’s perspectives. The choice to examine the conflict and issue through so many characters’ eyes was a good one, one that worked.
I’m glad that I buddy-read this book with two other friends, because the ending was something. As I got closer and closer to the last page, I found myself wondering how the heck this was going to come to any sort of a satisfying conclusion. I did not quite imagine what actually happened, and I wish I could have seen all three characters’ perspectives on what happened rather than just one, but it did feel “surprising yet inevitable,” as endings ultimately should. Can’t wait to talk through that one, though.