Reading is all about escapism. Leaving our own life and inhabiting someone else’s. Bonus points if we get to go somewhere new and do things we’d never dare to do ourselves.
Like pick up and leave our own lives to start over somewhere fresh.
At some point, we’ve all fantasized about this—whether it’s just imagining what would happen if we quit the job we hated, sold our tiny condo and moved somewhere with wide, open spaces, or something more drastic. To leave behind the mistakes we’ve made, the people who have hurt us, or those we’ve hurt despite our best intentions. In my upcoming book, The Last Flight, I explore the concept of disappearing, and what it requires of us:
People disappear every day. The man standing in line at Starbucks, buying his last cup of coffee before he gets into his car and drives into a new life, leaving behind a family who will always wonder what happened. Or the woman sitting in the last row of a Greyhound bus, staring out the window as the wind blows strands of hair across her face, wiping away a history too heavy to carry. You might be shoulder to shoulder with someone living their last moments as themselves and never know it.
But very few people actually stop to consider how difficult it is to truly vanish. The level of detail needed to eliminate even the tiniest trace. Because there’s always something. A small thread, a seed of truth, a mistake. It only takes a tiny pinprick of circumstance to unravel it all. A phone call at the moment of departure. A fender bender three blocks before the freeway onramp. A cancelled flight. A last-minute change of itinerary.
I’m fascinated by the idea of a fresh start. A new page. New faces in new places. And the whispering question, is it possible, always in the background. I wanted to write a book about two women who yearned for this kind of a do-over, who deserved and needed it. And then I set about figuring out how to make it happen for them. Claire, who had married the wrong man, and locked herself inside a dangerous cage. And Eva, whose choices had always been limited. Pre-ordained to dead-end, no matter how hard she tried.
As we await the publication of The Last Flight, I’ve made a companion list of books that fall under the theme of escaping. Of slipping into someone else’s skin and leaving our old lives for something better. Isn’t that what we’re all craving right now?
The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
If you haven’t heard about this New York Times instant bestseller yet, you’ve been living under a rock! It’s the story of the Vignes twins, two sisters living in a 1960’s black community in the south. At age sixteen they run away to New Orleans, but from there, their paths divide. Desiree continues on as a black woman, while Stella vanishes, only to turn up decades later passing as a white woman in California. This novel is a beautiful and emotional exploration of racial identity, and the desire to be both someone completely different and your truest self.
The Likeness, by Tana French
Book two in her Dublin Murder Squad series, The Likeness is by far my favorite Tana French books. The story of Detective Cassie Maddox, who is called out to a crime scene, only to discover the deceased woman looks exactly like her. Even more troubling, the woman is using an identity that Cassie used in an undercover operation years ago. Cassie goes undercover again, this time into the deceased woman’s life, to discover who she really was and what happened to her.
What makes this book so great is the sheer audacity of the author, who nails down every unbelievable corner of the premise until it shines with credibility. Cassie discovers a life filled with dark humor, deep friendships, and dysfunction. We are along for the ride as we see Cassie fall in love with the woman’s roommates. With her life. And we want to know what happened to that woman. Who killed her, and how their idyllic life inside a rambling old manor fell from grace to ruin.
The Passenger, by Lisa Lutz
This book has it all: Strong female lead, unreliable in that we don’t know who she is or what she’s done, and yet we know we can count on her to tell us the truth, even if we don’t know her real name. As a writer who worked hard to get her own characters out of bad situations, I’m familiar with how hard it is to cobble together a new name, a new history, new mannerisms and habits. I fell completely in love with this book and the myriad ways the main character approaches her life on the run. The main character in The Passenger inhabits many different identities and lives, but the truth of who she really is always chases after her.
Watch Me Disappear, by Janelle Brown
A missing mother, presumed dead after not returning from a hike in the mountains. A daughter who refuses to believe her mother is truly gone, and a husband who begins to unearth his wife’s many secrets. Watch Me Disappear forces the reader to tear through the pages, to figure out whether Billie Flanagan died on that mountain, or if she perhaps found an ingenious way to disappear instead. Watch Me Disappear is one of those rare books that will truly have you guessing until the very last page.
The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
I had never heard of this book before, although her masterpiece, Rebecca, is one of my all-time favorites. This one did not disappoint! Two strangers meet at a bar, and are astonished that they look identical. What seems unbelievable is made believable through du Maurier’s detailed descriptions, and you will have no problem believing this coincidence. They get very drunk, and the narrator, and Englishman named John, finds himself alone in a strange hotel room after blacking out. He discovers the other man, named Jean le Guy, has taken his clothes, his identity, passport, car, all of his belongings, leaving his own for John. Apparently, Jean le Guy is the owner of a chateau and glass factory, with a troublesome family and deep financial problems. John realizes no one will believe who he is or what has happened. Everyone believes him to be Jean le Guy, including Jean le Guy’s valet, his wife, his mother, and his daughter. What happens next is a masterful study in character development, as John immerses himself into the life of Jean le Guy, finding the family and a sense of belonging that has always eluded him. I tore through this book over the course of several days, and I can tell you it has the trademark du Maurier ending.
Dear Wife by Kimberly Belle
In this national bestseller, Kimberly Belle brings you Beth Murphy, a woman on the run from a man she used to love. She plans her escape carefully, making sure to leave no trace behind. Meanwhile, a few hundred miles away, a man returns home from work to learn his wife, Sabine, is missing. The reader will be turning pages trying to figure out how these two story lines collide, and I promise you, it won’t be in the way you think.
