The Rift Puts a Speculative Twist on the Missing Persons Thriller
The Rift, Nina Allan’s bleak but no less beautiful follow-up to The Race, is ostensibly about the mystery surrounding the 20-year disappearance and eventual reappearance of a girl named Julie Rouane, and the pain her family goes through during while she’s missing, and after she’s returned, claiming to have visited an alien world. But rather than get caught up in questions asked by those around Julie, Allan gives her subject a central role and agency in the plot, making her an active participant rather than simply a victim-shaped hole or a walking plot device in others’ lives.
It’s an effective method of exploring the alienation and isolation she feels after her return from the planet Fiby—as, finding few believers, she’s forced to prove who she is and what she believes again and again. Her character journey makes The Rift a wrenching read, offering a “missing person” story with more depth and emotion than the plot normally allows, with a layer of speculative unreality that makes it into something else entirely.
At 17, Julie Rouane disappeared one night in a public park. Her vanishing drove a wedge between her parents and caused her sister Selena to be wracked with guilt, as she was already distancing herself from Julie. They family was beset by crank letters filled with false hope and numerous people sought to profit from the terrible event, causing the investigation to stall and go cold. Twenty years later, Selena is contacted by a woman claiming to be Julie, who tells her about falling through a rift into an alien world where she remained until her eventual escape. Julie certainly seems like Selena’s sister, and Selena does want to believe, but she’s wary of being taken in by another imposter. And if Julie’s tales—and the artifacts she brought back with her—are genuine, what does it all mean? What really happened out there in the land beyond the rift?
It’s a common practice (common enough Allan calls attention to it with a nested novel-within-a-novel) for books about mysterious disappearances to make the character central to the mystery something of an enigma—a missing jigsaw piece that will eventually be used to complete a larger puzzle. Instead, Julie is given a full-throated voice, and significant time to describe what she believes happened to her, heightening the sense of alienation that permeates the book; from our perspective, Julie is either lying directly to us, or telling the truth about her alien abduction.
This is a book without easy answers. The Rouanes naturally have trouble accepting Julie back into their lives, and after thousands of crank letters, even doubt she is who she claims. Similarly, Julie’s bizarre experiences have left her disconnected from reality, and struggling to relate to those she once loved. It’s only when Julie starts to open up—and Selena decides solving the mystery isn’t worth destroying what remains of her relationship with her sister—that there’s even a chance their personal rift will heal. Allan refuses to definitively answer the questions posed by her narrative, instead offering us all possible solutions, and allowing us to choose what we think happened. It’s a more honest, realistic exploration of closure than most books offer—there’s no growing out of it, no definitive moment of healing, just people trying to decide for themselves what they are willing to accept.
For a story about how trauma can cut a slice through a life, it’s more poignant for The Rift to leave some of the edges ragged. It’s a reminder that upheaval is rarely resolved so easily as in books, that human relationships can often be messy, complicated, and unresolvable things.
The Rift is available July 11.