One morning in April 1991 when spring had not yet appeared, Marguerite left her house on her way to work at the University. She never came back. Her little sister, Georgene (Gigi), tries to provide clues that will help find the missing girl and embarks on a fascinating narrative in which the secrets of the past are intertwined with an eternal investigation that does not bear fruit.
Joyce Carol Oates, author of Blonde, Half-light or Niagara, publishes 48 clues about the disappearance of my sister (RBA), a psychological thriller that addresses issues such as the relationship between sisters, the traumas of adolescence and violence against women . Recurring themes in the literature of the eternal Nobel candidate, who in this email interview with La Vanguardia tells the details of this new work.
His novel talks about the disappearance of Marguerite. Are disappearances a particularly novelistic element because they disturb even more than murder?
Yes, certainly. Most disappearances of girls and women in the United States are related to crimes such as kidnapping, rape, and murder. However, it cannot be assumed that the victim was murdered if no body is found. This is particularly stressful and heartbreaking for family and friends. A significant number of people disappear in the United States each year and are never seen again. My novel resonates with the general anxiety that permeates American culture of distrust of strangers, fear of intimacy and the world beyond the immediate.
Marguerite was raped as a teenager. Her parents decided that she should not report him. Has society advanced in this area? Have we lost the fear or shame of reporting?
It is difficult to answer this question. Rape is commonly believed to be a largely underreported crime, as women and girls are often stigmatized by public recognition of the crime. When reported, prosecutors often do not bring charges, and even if there is a trial, guilty verdicts are rare. For a woman, it is often a losing prospect. Especially in a small town where everyone knows each other and there is likely sympathy for the rapist.
In Europe we know the history of Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) where women are murdered every day. Is the same thing happening on Highway 16 between Pince Gorge and Prince Rupert in the United States?
Yes I think so. But I am not a historian, in my novel the matter is approached from a personal perspective.
Georgene, who is not pretty, has a jealousy problem towards her sister Marguerite, who is beautiful. What traumas can a girl have due to her relationship with her sister and her lack of beauty?
The novel has a fairy tale background: there is the beautiful sister and there is the ugly sister. Fate and the cruelty of fate. Georgene is less valued because her sister is attractive and successful. She naturally feels envy and jealousy, like in a fairy tale.
You have set the plot of the novel in 1991. Would the investigation have been different if Marguerite had disappeared in 2024?
Because I needed to take the story through a period of time, it had to be set in the late 1990s. Basically, today would be no different.
In ’48 Clues About My Sister’s Disappearance’ there is a medium who claims to know something about Marguerite’s whereabouts. How do supernatural elements fit into her literature?
It is likely that the medium is deceiving herself. She hopes to exploit the family. But Georgene is too smart for her.
The press is quick to talk about Marguerite as “the missing heiress.” Do newspapers distort reality?
The media invariably reduces complex situations to headlines. It’s true that Marguerite is an heiress, but she is also an accomplished artist; that is overlooked.
Art is very present in your book…
I have long been interested in art and artists, especially women artists like Marguerite. But also theories of aesthetics: Marguerite’s minimalist, classical aesthetic, in contrast to the figurative, more literal and sensational aesthetic of rival male artist Elke, who ultimately betrays Marguerite, exploiting her disappearance for her own ends. . The question is: do artists have the right to use anyone and anything in their art, with the excuse that it is “art”? Is there a predominant morality in art or is it a bourgeois morality?
His novel draws a border between reality and imagination…
Ultimately, we must see that the novel is a kind of confession from Georgene: she is devastated by her sister’s disappearance and is constructing a narrative in which she is the one responsible, not a random stranger. Either she wants to believe that Marguerite “ran away” or that, in some mysterious way, Marguerite was banished by her younger sister. Georgene cannot accept the likely fact that Marguerite was kidnapped and murdered by a serial killer who is now imprisoned and confessing to her crimes; She refuses to believe this, that her beautiful and talented sister met such a sordid end. In this, Georgene is like many of us: we would prefer to construct a false reality to enhance the tragedy of a senseless death.
