{4.5\/5} “I’ve been immersed in the purgatory of my sister’s disappearance for the last decade. I think about her every… day. But since I prefer to avoid big emotional displays, I get criticized for not caring enough about her absence (mostly by people I don’t know, sometimes by the one I gave birth to). It’s bad enough every anniversary brings up extra Violet worship, but something about round numbers makes people lose their minds.”<\/p>\n
Acts of Violet<\/strong> by Margarita Montimore, published in 2022<\/p>\n Violet Volk was a magician and self-help guru who disappeared 10 years ago. At her last performance as a magician, she disappeared and never reappeared. No one knows if she did it on purpose or not — she hasn’t been found. She still has lots of admirers but her sister Sasha has more ambivalent feelings about her.<\/p>\n The story of Sasha is interspersed with transcripts from a podcast, newspaper articles, and letters. The email that Sasha sends to the podcast host is glorious.<\/p>\n It’s a bit like a Kate Morton novel, in that we gradually find out more and more about someone who’s not around.<\/p>\n It’s about what happens when you have a famous sister who doesn’t seem to care about you anymore, and when you realize that mysterious events might all be connected.<\/p>\n