THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HERE
Cecelia Ahern
Hyperion
Fiction
ISBN: 9781401301880

The ironically named Sandy Shortt, a very tall female with black hair, has devoted her life to finding the missing things and people of Ireland. As a child, she worried her parents with her obsessive searching for lost objects to the point that they took her to psychiatrist Gregory Burton. At Burton's, 14-year-old Sandy promptly loses one more thing --- her heart. Despite her love for Burton, he cannot solve her puzzling obsession with missing objects and people. Yet they form a close friendship that sustains her as she makes her way through life, joining the Irish police force when she graduates and then forming her own detective agency to search for missing persons.

Sandy’s most recent case brings her into telephone contact with Jack Ruttle, who calls hoping that she will search for his missing brother Donal. They agree to meet; both feel a special and unusual connection to the other over the phone, although the purpose of the meeting is to discuss finding Donal. Jack is shocked when Sandy doesn't show up; he is convinced that something is terribly wrong when she doesn't answer her phone, and so he decides to search for her.

Meanwhile, something extraordinary has happened to Sandy, who had stopped to jog along a canal. She becomes lost and can’t find her way back to her car. In fact, she is in a forest so unlike any place in Ireland that she knows without a doubt that she is no longer in her country. But how can that be?

Sandy wanders for two days in the odd land, wondering if she is dreaming, dead, or in a coma. Finally, she heads deeper into the woods, where she encounters a small group of welcoming people sitting around a campfire. But when she asks where they are, she is met with shocked silence, followed by bizarre answers: "We're dead," volunteers one of the campers, at least partly in jest.

Almost immediately, Sandy knows who these people are. She had read about them long ago and become fascinated with their story. Five students from a boarding school had gone missing on a camping trip in the ’60s. And now Sandy is sitting around a campfire with these individuals, lost before she was even born. Before Sandy can reconcile herself to this bewildering development, she is overwhelmed by one huge mystery after another as the group leads her to a village full of lost people, surrounded by missing objects. Less substantial lost things waft over them, such as the lost memory of a laugh or the forgotten scent of a baby's skin. As Sandy encounters some of the missing people she has searched for, she wonders why she is here. And, although she is told that no one can leave, she yearns for home.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HERE is unlike any book I have ever read, and it will haunt me for a very long time. Author Cecelia Ahern is a master storyteller, pulling readers in and not letting them go until they reach the conclusion of this amazing tale of yearning, loss and hope.

    --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

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