"Missing Sarah"

Paper Summary:

This paper first asserts that Maggie de Vries' "Missing Sarah" is a moving memoir of the author's relationship with her adopted sister. The paper also relates that the book was written in the shadow of the author's awareness of her sister's murder at the hands of a notorious Canadian mass murderer. The paper goes focuses on the narrative roles of the created characters of "Maggie" and "Sarah" in the text and argues the thesis that the disparity in our knowledge of the two characters - with the figure of the author being represented far more elusively than that of her sister - is a result of the different manifestations of narrative gaze within the text. The paper maintains that these gazes have narrative power to shape the spectator's perspective and understanding of the complex issues of identity, race, and familial interactions that define the text.

From the Paper:

"It may be argued that one reason we know so little about "Maggie" in the text as opposed to "Sarah" - a fact that is extraordinary given that "Maggie" is "Sarah's" sister - is the possibility that the relationship between the siblings was defined by tensions that the author does not wish to revisit. Thus, the author - through the vehicle of the "unreliable narrator" - obscures the figure of "Maggie" in the text, and thereby avoids having to publicly discuss issues that may be emotionally unsettling to her. Thus, it is only at moments that the reader seems to catch glimpses of this tension; moments that seem to be revealed almost unconsciously by the author. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• de Vries, Maggie. Missing Sarah: A Vancouver Woman Remembers Her Vanished Sister. Toronto: Penguin, 2003.

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