Today I am delighted to host the Blog Tour for the heart-breaking story Missing Pieces, by debut author Laura Pearson. She has stopped by to answer all my bookish questions, and if you continue reading, you'll also find my review:
Hi Laura and welcome. First, could you tell us about yourself?
Hello. Thanks for having me. Well, I live in Leicestershire with my husband and our two children, who are four and very nearly two. I’m thirty-eight. I’ve worked on and off as a copywriter and editor for years. I’ve spent many years in London and one in New York. And I’m a writer.
Your debut novel, Missing Pieces, is a heartbreaking story. Can you tell us a bit about it? What inspired this idea?
It’s about an ordinary family and the way its members are affected by a life-altering tragedy. The first part focuses on the immediate aftermath of the three-year-old daughter’s death and the second part takes place twenty-five years later, when the ripples are still being felt.
I wrote it about six years ago but the idea’s been around for longer than that. I was writing a novel years ago about a woman who was writing a novel and whose main character came to life, and there was a strand in it about her having lost her sister in childhood. I think that was the start of it. The letters the eldest daughter writes to her lost sister came first and everything else eventually slotted around that.
In the story there are three very different women, a mother and her two daughters. How would you describe each of them in a few words?
Linda, the mother, is a bit of a dreamer whose plans haven’t worked out but who was content with her ordinary life until she lost her daughter.
Esme, the eldest daughter, is a woman who’s never been able to properly move beyond losing her sister. She lives a sort of trapped existence, until she decides to face up to what happened.
Bea, the youngest daughter, has always felt shut out of her own family because they lost Phoebe before she was born. She’s broken away from them and is strong, but she’s vulnerable too.
Which one did you feel closer to while writing this book?
I love them all, but I think my heart is with Esme. She’s the character who came first, and I’ve lived with her for a really long time.
I expect many readers will cry when reading Missing Pieces, but would you describe it as life-affirming too?
I hope it is. It’s definitely got a lot of sadness but I think it ends on a hopeful note.
Missing Pieces is your debut novel, but is it the first book you have written?
It was the second novel I completed. My first needs some big edits but that is also going to be published by Agora in the future.
What can we expect from you next?
My next novel will hopefully be coming out early next year. It’s called I Wanted You To Know and it’s about a mother and daughter who only get to spend a year together but still have a huge impact on one another’s lives.
About the Book:
Title: Missing Pieces
Author: Laura Pearson
Published: June 21st 2018 by Agora Books
Blurb: What if the one thing that kept you together was breaking you apart?
All Linda wants to do is sleep. She won’t look at her husband. She can’t stand her daughter. And she doesn’t want to have this baby. Having this baby means moving on, and she just wants to go back to before. Before their family was torn apart, before the blame was placed.
Alienated by their own guilt and struggling to cope, the Sadler family unravels. They grow up, grow apart, never talking about their terrible secret.
That is until Linda’s daughter finds out she’s pregnant. Before she brings another Sadler into the world, Bea needs to know what happened twenty-five years ago. What did they keep from her? What happened that couldn’t be fixed?
A devastating mistake, a lifetime of consequences. How can you repair something broken if pieces are missing?
Missing Pieces is Laura Pearson’s debut novel.
Review: Missing Pieces is a tragic story of loss. When the worse happens to Linda, she loses the will to live. There is no happiness or light anymore in her life, just guilt. For me, it was difficult to read about Linda's story as it is a very sombre and dark one. But even if I cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like to go through what she went through, I think the author's portrait of loss, grief and depression felt very real and raw.
The second part of the book focuses in Linda's daughter, Bea. It's been more than 20 years since the tragedy that made their family crumble but it still feels like a dark cloud above them. They've never talked about it openly. For Bea, it's time to finally uncover all their secrets and be a family again. I found this second part more engaging than the first as I became more invested in the story, I cared about these characters and I was rooting for them.
It was heart-breaking to read what happened to this family and how it affected them. In my opinion, Missing Pieces is hard to read but worth it. Beautiful writing and very good character building. I'll definitely be looking out for Laura Pearson's next story.
