by
Tara is turning 40. The thought is daunting. She hates her job at the Civic Hospital and is having trouble with her teenage son. Her marriage has gone stale and she finds herself embarrassingly drooling over a young man in the grocery store. Meanwhile, her best friend Lisa, her "emotional support animal," goes missing. Tara joins the police and her crazy women's collective in the hunt for her best friend. Loosely based on a true story.
All the carts were taken at the supermarket on Tuesday. I found one off to the side of the vegetable aisle. It had a defective wheel, which resulted in me almost overturning a display of cantaloupes. The cart was also enormous. No doubt this was a deliberate ploy on the part of the supermarket to encourage excess shopping.
"I feel as though I'm driving a school bus," I announced to the frail, pale orange-haired woman to my left, who was squeezing the small, unappetizing looking cantaloupes.
She smiled faintly and nodded. I wondered how she had the strength to push the heavy cart through the long aisles of the grocery store at her age.
"Mum, I'll go with you to one of those Women against Rape meetings if you want?" Devon said to my astonishment, his voice rising at the end of his sentence. "There’s only one condition. You have to watch '8 Mile' with me."
"'8 Mile'? Isn’t that the movie based on the book by Stephen King?"
READ MORE"Nah, you’re thinking about 'The Green Mile,'" Devon replied. "'8 Mile' is the story of a rapper in Detroit. It's based on the life of Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers. Eminem even stars in it," he said with increasing enthusiasm. "I think it’ll give you a better idea of where he's coming from. You know, you're always talking about these girls who've been, like, abused and what horrible lives they've had. You even feel bad about boys who were taken advantage of by priests or their hockey coaches. So why don't you have any sympathy for Marshall? His mother was abusive. She was mean to him, and she did drugs! Also, she, like, gave him something called Munchkins syndrome," Devon added uncertainly.
"Munchausen syndrome?” I asked, trying to picture the tough guy with the tattoos and bad attitude as a small child with a manipulative and controlling mother.
"Yeah, that sounds right. She made him feel sick when he was totally healthy. And, Mum, I know you would respect the way Em felt about his little brother, Nathan. He, like, didn't wanna leave him alone in the house with his mother when he finally split from Detroit. He's also really keen about his daughter, Hailie Jade. He talks about her all the time in his songs and on TV."
I pushed the buttons on the radio. The Steve Miller band was singing, "Time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future." I had a sense of motion. The car was moving forward, and with every traffic light I passed, I was moving farther away from Lisa and our routine evenings at the ByTowne Theatre. The rest of us were going ahead, and Lisa had been left behind. I wanted to go back, not just to last Thursday night, but to my university days, so I could live my life all over again.
I wanted to be sixteen or twenty-six again, making decisions based on what I knew now. So many lost opportunities. How had I managed to completely screw up my life? I'd done everything wrong except that I hadn't become a street prostitute or a serial murderer. Too late for the former—who would want me? But there was still time for the latter.
COLLAPSEJewel Hart, Author/Book Marketing Specialist on Chick Lit Café wrote:"Tara is leading an unhappy but safe life, stuck in a career and marriage she doesn't like, until her best friend vanishes. Finding Lisa is about having everything, losing something important, and re-evaluating life, love, and purpose as a result.
It stands out from other stories of disappearance and searching because of its focus on a variety of themes beyond the event itself. These include women's connections and friendships, the kinds of shared interactions that keep such connections alive, and underlying issues of spousal abuse, midlife changes, and new possibilities.
The first step to making meaningful changes is to confront evidence that one's values, perceptions, and patterns are no longer serving their purpose. As long as Lisa is part of her life, Tara isn't compelled to take this step or make these realizations; but Lisa's disappearance prompts a cascade of grief, self-examination, and determination in ways than one, and this in turn fosters new experiences and choices.
Set against the backdrop of Canadian culture, Finding Lisa follows Tara's journey as she learns to trust strangers, runs into danger and even possible romance, and navigates strange new worlds in which her usual responses need revision.
Her shortcomings and failures are reassessed as her search leads to not only dead ends, but a passage of time that gives her the feeling that Lisa is being left behind as life moves forward without her.
As she faces questions about whether Lisa lost her sobriety and whether her boyfriend Ryan was involved, Tara confronts her own life decisions. Ultimately, Finding Lisa is about Tara finding herself, her place in the world, and her own willingness to accept pat answers and appearances that defy easy explanations.
The emotionally charged conclusion that takes an unexpected twist will delight readers who anticipated a very different ending from Tara's thought processes, making Finding Lisa a delightful study in surprises that holds the power to thoroughly engross right up to its stormy conclusion."5
"Finding Lisa by Sigrid Macdonald comes highly recommended by Chick Lit Café.
Finding Lisa by Sigrid Macdonald is a powerful, thought-provoking, mystery/suspense and a five star story that will keep you turning pages.
I really love books that have a strong, yet unique protagonist and therefore I was delighted to be introduced to Tara. Tara tells us this story in her own words and lets us in to her deepest, and sometimes dark, thoughts. She's a great character with lots of quirks! I laughed out loud when she tells us her feelings are hurt because Monday (the pet dog) enjoys licking the sofa just as much as he enjoys licking her hand. There are lots of one-liners like this that help to keep this rather serious story buoyant and upbeat.
Packed with facts about missing people and domestic violence it is clear to see the author has great knowledge about these issues, and touches on them with careful consideration and a raw honesty that touched me. I thought I was going to read a story about finding one's self, with a look at how we reach middle age and deal with dissatisfaction. And, at first that's what I saw. The woman next door, approaching forty and not happy with what she sees in the mirror. Brilliant touch by Sigrid Macdonald to have the running saga of the eternal bad-hair-day reflecting externally what was going on in Tara's mind and spirit. However, there was such a lot more to this story."
