Reading just one novel by a great author, like eating just one potato chip, is never enough. I turn into an addict wanting more, a feeling I had after reading "No One You Know," the third novel penned by Michelle Richmond and published in 2008. For some time now I have had it on my to do list to read one of her earlier novels since my Richmond addiction hasn't been fed for quite some time. Unfortunately, she is anything but prolific with just three novels published since 2003. 

I had wondered if her earlier novels are as good as her latest one, so recently I decided that the time was ripe to check out "The Year of Fog," Richmond's second novel which was published just a year earlier than "No One You Know." I find it curious that these two books came out one right after the other and then nothing for the last three years, nor for the four years prior to that after she had published her first novel, "Dream of the Blue Room," in 2003. 

This 2007 novel has as its theme the disappearance without a trace of a beloved child and its effect upon those who are left behind. Not having any certainty, they are left to wonder whether she is really dead and it is time to move on, or perhaps there is still reason to hope. Richmond explores in considerable detail the emotional dynamics of this tragedy to help us empathize with the incomprehensible nature of this loss. She portrays this through a thirty-ish professional photographer named Abby Mason, who lives in San Francisco and narrates the story from her own personal perspective in a format resembling a day by day, moment by moment diary.

While little Emma Balfour is the daughter of her fiancé, Abby is saddled with the most emotional baggage since she was the one who was with her and responsible for her care when she disappeared. Abby becomes increasingly isolated in her guilt ridden angst as the last person who holds out unreserved hope that Emma is still alive and out there somewhere. 

Richmond's writing style is nothing short of brilliant with her languidly descriptive passages filled with effortless lucidity and her casual verbiage describing daily events in such a way as to keep them interesting while tying everything into a smooth narrative. 

I was curious as to how she was going to handle this story. Since Emma's disappearance had been so puzzling, I had incorrectly assumed that the story would advance along the lines of a mystery with a developing set of clues, but such is not the case here. The clues are miniscule and unchanging. The only thing that changes is Abby's understanding of them as she tries to recapture bits and pieces from her fading memory.

Richmond takes this opportunity to develop the subset theme of human memory to augment her plot. She cites case studies of patients who have lost their memory along with others who do not have the ability to forget anything, even the most minute of details. These thematic asides are visited frequently and gone into in considerable detail, a literary quirk which Richmond repeats in her next novel using various mathematical theorems as its subset theme. In both cases,  these asides are only marginally beneficial in advancing the plot, so my modest criticism would be that the author overuses this concept to the point where it becomes more of a literary conceit.  

Even though this novel contains the beautiful word smithing and narrative structure which I admire so much, it suffers from the author's needless extension of the overwrought plot to the point where it gets in the way of her marvelous storytelling capabilities. The sad result is that the story becomes unremittingly dreary and repetitive with Abby repeatedly doing some very unwise things in the course of her search. Even her flashback memories to happier times do little to relieve the angst in a story that goes nowhere for some eighty percent of the novel. 

I have a low threshold of patience when it comes to wading through literary stürm and drung, and I reached my limit far before this story began to find its direction towards what I hoped would be some sort of a cathartic denouement. There is nothing worse than speed reading though the later parts of a book for the sole reason that I had already invested so much time in reading it that I just wanted to see how it ends. Even the end turned out to be unsatisfying, since it hinged more on blind, dumb luck beating incredible odds rather than on any special set of rational or deductive decisions.

This is the story of Abby's year in the fog of her search, where each day (and each chapter in the book) starts off with Abby revisiting her memory of those few hours with the thought, "Here is the truth, this is what I know." 

Living near San Francisco allows Abby, originally from the Gulf Coast, many opportunities to bring Emma down to Ocean Beach to look for sand dollars. Abby loves the fog rolling in off the Pacific Ocean, but on this day the fog is not to be her friend when Emma races ahead to look for sand dollars and then she disappears into the fog. Abby is momentarily distracted, and when she lifts her eyes Emma is nowhere to be seen. 

The days drag on and on with no new news, and Abby has to cope with her own guilt and sense of loss along with feeling her fiancé's growing estrangement. The natural human reaction would be to blame the person responsible, which is what Jake Balfour does, although he doesn't say so in so many words. All he can say is, "Abby, what were you thinking?"

Since this is a prime surfing area, others believe that Emma had been washed out to sea by a freak wave, but Abby can't believe this since Emma hated to go near the water. Abby refuses to accept the fact that Emma might be dead unless her body is found, so she pushes on in an obsessive zeal to turn over every possible clue in the ever more faint hope that something, no matter how minor, may turn up. In the days, weeks, and months to come she will gain new friends to help her in her search.  2007, Delacorte Press-Random House, 384 pages.