The Next Time You See Me
Holly Goddard Jones, 2013
Simon & Schuster
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451683363
Summary
In The Next Time You See Me, the disappearance of one woman, the hard-drinking and unpredictable Ronnie Eastman, reveals the ambitions, prejudices, and anxieties of a small southern town and its residents.
There’s Ronnie’s sister Susanna, a dutiful but dissatisfied schoolteacher, mother, and wife; Tony, a failed baseball star-turned-detective; Emily, a socially awkward thirteen-year-old with a dark secret; and Wyatt, a factory worker tormented by a past he can’t change and by a love he doesn’t think he deserves.
Connected in ways they cannot begin to imagine, their stories converge in a violent climax that reveals not just the mystery of what happened to Ronnie but all of their secret selves. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 18, 1979
• Where—Russellville, Kentucky, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Kentucky; M.F.A.,
Ohio State University
• Awards—Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award
• Currently—lives in Greensboro, North Carolina
Holly Goddard Jones was born and raised in Russellville, Kentucky. At the age of nineteen, after a year of college at nearby Western Kentucky University, she married her boyfriend, Brandon, and the two moved to Lexington, Kentucky, to pursue degrees at the University of Kentucky. In Lexington, Holly took her first fiction workshops and worked part-time as a marketing assistant at University Press of Kentucky.
Holly soon went on to receive an MFA in creative writing at The Ohio State Univerity, and to teach at Denison University, Murray State University, and most recently the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she is Assistant Professor of English. Over the years, she has also taught workshops for the Reynolds Young Writers' Workshop, the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference, the Sewanee School of Letters, and Centre College.
Holly's first book, Girl Trouble, a collection of stories, was published in 2009. Stories from the collection were published in various journals and anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories, New Stories from the South 2007 and 2008, Southern Review, Epoch, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, and Hudson Review. The book was also featured in O: The Oprah Magazine, People, New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere.
The Next Time You See Me, Holly's debut novel, was published in 2013 by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Her newest short fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Tin House, Epoch, and Southern Review.
She was a 2007 recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.
She and Brandon, who teaches interior design at High Point University, are still happily married, and they have two rowdy dogs, Bishop and Martha. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Have you turned the last pages of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and don't know what to pick up next? Try Holly Goddard Jones' debut novel, The Next Time You See Me, which Flynn herself has called "simply mesmerizing."... Like Flynn, Jones] not only creates young women with troubles, she also vividly depicts a part of the country often obscured from view.
Chicago Tribune
When Ronnie Eastman disappears from a small southern town in 1993, the residents start revealing their true characters, in Jones’s transparent debut novel (after Girl Trouble, a short story collection). Ronnie’s sister, Susanna, disappointed with her marriage and life, regrets not pursuing her teenage crush because of her father’s racism. That crush, a local baseball star named Tony, is now a detective assigned to find Ronnie. Tony and Susanna’s close proximity to each other for the first time in years brings the old feelings rushing back. Paralleling the story of the search is the story of Emily, a local teenager, awkward and teased, who finds a body a few days before Halloween. Emily is nursing her own crush, on a boy who just moved to the school, and rather than reporting her gruesome find, she uses it as a way to get closer to him. And Wyatt is a local factory worker, living a lonely life until he meets Sarah, a nurse he thinks he might be able to love. All of these lives connect through the search for Ronnie, with consequences for them all. Jones ties together the narratives effectively, cycling point-of-view between the three main players, but her characters are underdeveloped and there’s little doubt about the identity of the killer.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This first novel by award-winning Jones (Girl Trouble) is going to be hot. In the vein of Gone Girl, last summer’s runaway smash, Jones’s tightly written Southern thriller will be one of spring’s sizzling titles. Jones brilliantly weaves together story lines from unexpected angles. Her writing is fluid and she keeps a pace that will have readers lacing on their running shoes. And what a suspenseful, emotional, addictive run it is! Buy it now, read it now, share it now
Library Journal
The residents of a small Kentucky town react to the disappearance of a local woman in this first novel by short story writer Jones (Girl Trouble, 2009)... Susanna Mitchell...becomes increasingly concerned that she hasn't heard from her hard-drinking, slightly disreputable older sister Ronnie for longer than usual.... The police detective assigned to Ronnie's case is Tony Joyce, an old classmate of Susanna's.... Susanna is...excited to work on the case with Tony, whose reappearance in her life underlines her dissatisfaction with her marriage.... There's not much suspense about the possible crime, but Jones builds intense tension surrounding the choices her flawed but compellingly sympathetic characters make as they fight against lonely isolation within the tight confines of small-town America.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Emily’s initial shock at discovering Ronnie’s body develops, over time, into an intense fascination and a sense of connection to the corpse. What do you think drives Emily back to visit the body? What motivates her to keep it hidden?
2. How does Ronnie’s disappearance force Susanna to question her own life decisions? Do you think she was aware of her own unhappiness before Ronnie went missing?
3. Christopher experiences a range of emotions about Emily, from disdain to empathy to attraction. What do you think draws Christopher to Emily? In what ways are they similar?
4. Discuss Susanna and Dale’s relationship. What do you make of Dale’s treatment of his wife? Do they both share the blame for their unhealthy relationship?
5. On p.225, Susanna’s mother tells her, “If you’re going to leave what you’ve got, you better know what you’re getting.” Compare and contrast how the characters in the novel are defined by their comfort zones: Emily, Susanna, Christopher, Tony, Wyatt. In what ways do these characters find satisfaction and/or disappointment by taking risks?
6. Ronnie is a polarizing character, one that Holly Goddard Jones depicts primarily through the lens of other characters. What is your take on Ronnie?
7. On p.169, Jones writes of Mr. Wieland, Emily’s science teacher, “He didn’t like to think that had he been Emily’s peer rather than her teacher, he’d have been one of the students pelting her with her lunch. But he wondered.” In what ways do the characters in The Next Time You See Me discover their capacity for cruelty, particularly Christopher and Wyatt? What is the point that Jones is making about the dark side of human nature?
8. Wyatt is a sympathetic character in many ways, despite his mistakes. How did your opinion of Wyatt evolve as you learned more about him?
9. What do you think provokes Wyatt to attack Sam? Do you think he blames Sam for his own actions?
10. On p.385, when Emily’s mother expresses her remorse about advising Emily to “try to be normal,” Susanna responds, “I don’t that’s such bad advice.” Do you think that Susanna is being sincere? What do you make of Emily’s behavior throughout the story?
11. Tony and Susanna’s brief affair ends abruptly once Ronnie’s body is found. Was her disappearance the only reason they were drawn to each other?
(Questions issued by publisher.)