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No One You Know No One You Know

by Michelle Richmond (Goodreads Author)

3.52 of 5 stars 3.52 · rating details · 2,180 ratings · 456 reviews

Michelle Richmond dazzled readers and critics alike with her luminous novel The Year of Fog." "Now Richmond returns with an intensely emotional, multilayered familydrama-a woman's search for her sister's killer that spirals into a journey of secrets, revelations, and damaged lives.
All her life Ellie Enderlin had been known asLila's sister. Until one day, without warning,...more Michelle Richmond dazzled readers and critics alike with her luminous novel The Year of Fog." "Now Richmond returns with an intensely emotional, multilayered familydrama-a woman's search for her sister's killer that spirals into a journey of secrets, revelations, and damaged lives.
All her life Ellie Enderlin had been known asLila's sister. Until one day, without warning, the shape of their family changed forever. Twenty years ago, Lila, a top math student at Stanford, was murdered in a crime that was never solved. In the aftermath ofher sister's death, Ellie entrusted her most intimate feelings to a man who turned the story into a bestselling true crime book-a book that both devastated her family and identified one ofLila's professors as the killer.
Decades later, two Americans meet in a remote village in Nicaragua. Ellie is now a professional coffee buyer, an inveterate traveler and incapable of trust.Peter is a ruined academic. And their meeting is not by chance. As rain beats down on the steaming rooftops of the village, Peter leaves Ellie with a gift-the notebook that Lila carried everywhere, a piece ofevidence not found with her body. Stunned, Ellie will return home to San Francisco to explore the mysteries of Lila's notebook, filled with mathematical equations, and begin a search that has been waiting for herall these years. It will lead her to a hundred-year-old mathematical puzzle, to a lover no one knew Lila had, to the motives and fate of the man who profited from their family's anguish-and to thedeepest secrets even sisters keep from each other. As she connects with people whose lives unknowingly swirled around her own, Ellie will confront a series of startling revelations-from the eloquent truths ofnumbers to confessions of love, pain and loss.
A novel about the stories and lies that strangers, lovers and families tell-and the secrets we keep even from ourselves--MichelleRichmond's new novel is a work of astonishing depth and beauty, at once heartbreaking, provocative, and impossible to put down. "From the Hardcover edition."(less)

ebook, 320 pages

Published June 24th 2008 by Delacorte Press (first published 2008)

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Jun 02, 2009 Lisa Vegan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: all those who appreciate a good novel, Michelle Richmond fans

Shelves: fiction, gr-author, reviewed, novel, san-francisco, favorites, altta, lt-author

It’s official: I am a huge fan of Michelle Richmond’s writing style, and of her storytelling, and especially the characters she creates and the subject matter she chooses. My admiration for her The Year of Fog was not a fluke; I was wowed by this book also. (I plan to read her other older published novel and book of short stories, and any other writing she creates that I can get my hands on.)

In this novel the author has profound truths to say about stories, life, and loss, and I don’t think I’m...more It’s official: I am a huge fan of Michelle Richmond’s writing style, and of her storytelling, and especially the characters she creates and the subject matter she chooses. My admiration for her The Year of Fog was not a fluke; I was wowed by this book also. (I plan to read her other older published novel and book of short stories, and any other writing she creates that I can get my hands on.)

In this novel the author has profound truths to say about stories, life, and loss, and I don’t think I’m using hyperbole by claiming that.

It was written beautifully and includes more than a smattering of incredibly lovely sentences. If I hadn’t been so eager to keep reading I’d have given in to the temptation to note a couple of them so I’d remember them long after reading the book.

On page 196 of this book there’s a very, very funny reference to her previous novel The Year of Fog, done without naming its title, showing an impeccable sense of humor but not deserving of the jabs she took at that book, in my opinion. Having that passage in this book gave wonderful comic relief for those readers who have already read her The Year of Fog.

I guess these two books are mysteries of a sort, although I have them tagged as fiction. I realize that the books I have tagged as mystery are generally those that are part of a mystery series and these are stand alone novels, but they are literary mysteries.

My main gripe was that while reading this book many times I wanted to call out: No, don’t go there alone. No, don’t confront that person yourself. I’m not sure that those parts of the story were flawed; it may be that it’s just that in some circumstances I’m a complete wimp and overly cautious.

But overall, this was a very satisfying read. I really love how in her novels I learn all sorts of new things about the world, something that I don’t find in all fiction. (In The Year of Fog it was photography and memory; in this book it was coffee and mathematics.)

This book has made me think a great deal about the stories I've told and tell myself about my own history and about my own life. It's a very thought provoking read.

Addendum: I just got hold of a paperback edition of this book and it has a particularly good reader’s guide in the back. In addition to the commonly added discussion questions, which are excellent here, there’s other very unique material. There’s a conversation between the author and her two sisters and they talk about not only this book but The Year of Fog and Richmond’s other books too. Having this included is of particular interest because No One You Know is about two sisters, and their relationship is an important part of the story. The author states she thinks music is an important part of a book club meeting and there’s a wonderful No One You Know playlist included; each song has some explanatory information about why it’s included. Now, I’ve never seen anything like this in the back of a book! There are also two recipes for coffee cocktails, also a lot of fun since coffee has such a prominent place in this book. These inclusions are all very satisfying.
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Jun 13, 2008 Meg rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: book-club

Toward the end of this incredibly moving literary mystery, the storyteller� and Ellie is a storyteller; narrator is far too sterile a word for what is going on here� comes to the realization that stories aren� t set in stone. I don� t know if that is a universal truth, provable to the irrefutable certainty demanded by the mathematician characters in No One You Know, but it is clearly true about the story told in these wonderful pages. This story is set in something far richer: fertile literary s...more

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Sep 08, 2008 Kay rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Kay by: Second Life Story Mountain Writers Center

I went to the "Athena Isle Writers Meeting" at Story Mountain Center for Writers in Second Life a couple of weeks ago and met Michelle Richmond. The talk with her made me rush to find The Year of Fog and No One You Know, which looked like the book of hers I'd like to read rather than Fog, so I got it from the library. The transcript of the meeting with Michelle Richmond is here.

The story is beautifully written, simple exposition of layers of Ellie's emotional life after the murder of a sister an...more

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Oct 24, 2008 Jacki rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this in just a couple of sittings. It sucked me in from the beginning and hooked me til the end. I loved how she talked about the elements of stories within her story. It was like she was writing to the reader.

The story itself was a major draw: her sister was murdered 20 years ago- the guy accused of killing her appears in this random restaurant in this random city and says he didn't do it- gives her his sister's notebook- she is intrigued, tries to find who had murdered her sister.

Along...more

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Sep 02, 2008 Carol rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: nobody

I had read The Year of Fog by this author and was eager to read this one. This book, however, was quite disappointing. First of all, the main premise is flawed. The main character's sister, Lila, is murdered and her sister's college professor writes a nonfiction book about the murder naming the killer which would never be done. The person who was named was not the killer and he could have sued the author for libel and collected big bucks. From then on the book went downhill to me. Ellie searches...more

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Oct 02, 2008 Ginny Messina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Very moving and beautifully written. In this book, Michelle Richmond examines the complexity and evolution of stories and story telling in the same way that she looked at the complexity of memory in The Year of Fog. I think I liked this even better than TYoF. (And, of course, I loved that the author poked fun at herself by having her protagonist give a somewhat lukewarm review of that earlier novel.) It’s a great story—a good literary mystery—and the little snippets about coffee and mathematics...more

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Dec 18, 2008 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this because I enjoyed the author's first book (The Year of Fog) so much. I didn't like this one near as well. The basic story is a woman who is still haunted by her sister's murder some twenty years later and how she finds the missing answers. The murdered sister was a mathematician so there is a LOT of math-speak in this one, with references to theories and equations and as a person who has no interest in numbers, I found myself skimming and/or skipping the math passages. I read it one...more

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Dec 03, 2008 Sue Daniels rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Clare

The very talented writer, Richmond , draws you into the mind and soul of a very ordinary and very likable character,Ellie, and makes her so real. At the time of the murder of her sister, Ellie is 19. she finds her life changes, her parents lost in their own grief allow their previous very happy and stable, marriage to fall apart. She finds that the only person who she is comfortable with is her English professor and she confides in him, how she feels ,how the murder of her sister has changed eve...more

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Mar 11, 2013 Marguerite rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The reviews I read used phrases like: "gripping page turner/grabs reader from first chapter/riveting literary thriller/quietly captivating...", and that influenced my decision to get this book.

The story is about Ellie, whose sister, Lila, was murdered and the killer never caught. Lila's death devastated her family and Ellie felt alone in dealing with her grief. She turned to her Lit Prof, Andrew Thorpe, and confided too much. He took her confidences, as well as those of her parents, and turned L...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After Ellie's older sister is murdered, her friend/college English professor betrays her friendship by writing a best selling true crime book about the crime. He boldly claims her sister's married lover was the killer, although no charges were ever filed.

Twenty years later, Ellie (who travels the world as a coffee buyer) finds herself face to face with the supposed killer. He acknowledges that he was cheating on his wife with her sister (a relationship that quickly dissolved after he was publicl...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Lenore Appelhans rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

“A story has no beginning or end. Arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead,” Author Richmond writes. Ellie’s life has been shaped by her sister’s unsolved murder, and the “true crime” account of it written by a professor, Andrew Thorpe, she once intimately trusted. That book revealed Lila’s math professor and secret married lover as the perp. But Ellie begins to question everything she thought was true when a chance meeting in an unlik...more “A story has no beginning or end. Arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead,” Author Richmond writes. Ellie’s life has been shaped by her sister’s unsolved murder, and the “true crime” account of it written by a professor, Andrew Thorpe, she once intimately trusted. That book revealed Lila’s math professor and secret married lover as the perp. But Ellie begins to question everything she thought was true when a chance meeting in an unlikely place yields Lila’s notebook that she used to jot down mathematical equations, leading her on a search to discover what really happened that fateful night.

I read an ARC of this novel which describes the book like this: “A riveting family drama about the stories we tell – a novel of astonishing depth and beauty, at once heartbreaking, provocative, and impossible to put down.” Jacket copy often exaggerates, but in this case I wholeheartedly agree with it. I bought a copy of this for my “keeper” bookshelf and it is one of favorites reads of 2008.

The narrative is very much about how little twists of fate can alter our life stories. For example, if Ellie had let Lila take the car that Wednesday, she might still be alive, Ellie’s parents might still be together, Ellie might be married and have kids by now. Stories and the endless variations of storytelling are themes in counterpoint with the very strict and exact nature of mathematics. I loved how all the pieces of the story fit together in the end like a perfect mathematical proof.

Thorpe once said in one of the classes Ellie attended that “in order for a book to be really good, it’s not enough to develop the major characters. The minor ones, too, have to be distinct. When readers close the book, they should remember everyone who walks across the page.” I do.

There is a smattering of mathematical talk that went way over my head, but I still found it fascinating. Ellie also has a very interesting job. Due to her great sense of smell, she works as a coffee cupper, looking for great coffee beans all over the world. Having learned a lot about fruit (thanks to a job I did for Passina) and pistachios (thanks to a lobbyist I met at a party on Capitol Hill), I really enjoyed learning more about coffee.

Extremely highly recommended!

"A story does not only belong to the person who was telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who was listening."(less)

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Aug 06, 2011 Nikole rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm at a loss as to whether or not I enjoyed No One You Know. I know that I enjoyed the last half of the book, for most of this afternoon/evening I found myself unable to put the book down-wanting to see how the story was going to play out. To see whether my suspicions about this character or that character were right. And I did like how it finally ended...

However, I found that the book had a few flaws in the beginning that made it almost impossible to read. The first being that I did not care f...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm enjoying No One You Know, but at times I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's slower than I thought it would be considering the subject matter (a 39 year old woman reenters the search for her sister's killer after 20 years). But I think the writing is beautiful and it makes you think. The main character's (Ellie) sister (Lila) was a mathemetician, so there is a lot about math in the book. It's cool how the author ties math proofs and problems with the mystery of Lila's murder, and she does i...more

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May 31, 2011 Joanne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, fiction

This book gets classified as a mystery, since it involves a death which is never solved, but it's really about the surviving sister, Ellie, and the way her life has been shaped. The murdered sister, Lila, was a math genius, so there's a good deal of math theory that's in the book for literary symbolism, and one of the other main characters is a literature professor, so there's also a lot of talking about story and perspective and truth and fiction. All this talking is the problem with the book,...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Michele Shimp rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, early

I had read her first book The Year of Fog last year and rated it 4 stars. So I was very excited to get an advance copy of her next book, No One you Know, from the Early Reviewers at Library Thing. I brought it with me on vacation and it was the first book I read.[return][return]The story centers on Ellie and her sister, Lila. Or, rather, Ellie

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Oct 28, 2010 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A fascinating story of a young woman whose life was put on hold by the senseless, officially unsolved, murder of her brilliant mathematician sister, twenty years ago. Ellie's interpretation of that event had been shaped by the publication of a book written by her supposed friend and confidant who was also her literature professor. The characters are well drawn, the settings clearly delineated, and the story is compelling. Did the man, identified in the book as the probable killer and who subsequ...more

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Jun 08, 2010 Denise rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Poignant and haunting..., February 19, 2010
A sister's quest to find out the truth behind the murder of her sister ends with self discovery and revelations about the nature of relationships between loved ones. How well do you really know your family? Are they keeping secrets from you? What truths are revealed simply by living together and being related?

Twenty years after the fact, Ellie Enderlin is haunted by the death of her reticent and secretive older sister, mathematical genius and Stanfor...more

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Jan 24, 2010 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

Ellie Enderlin is a professional coffee buyer whose life is influenced by one event: the murder of her sister Lila twenty years earlier. After a chance encounter during a coffee buying trip, Ellie decides to conduct her own investigation into Lila's death, which was never officially solved. However, doing so forces her to confront the truth of her family, her relationship with her sister, and her own isolation. Complicating matters is Ellie's own guilt for unwittingly contributing to a true crim...more

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Jul 12, 2009 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I hovered between 4 and 5 stars on this one and essentially went 4.49, rounding down. This was a great story about a murder 20 years prior, and the impacts of that murder on various people connected to the vicitm. The way it's told is through the victims sister ultimately successful search for the truth two decades later. Interspersing the interests of her sister (math) and her own (coffee) helped give a great back and forth for two women that while alike in looks, were very disparate in other w...more

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Jun 05, 2009 Literary Feline rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I imagine Ellie would be dismayed to learn that I do not like the taste of coffee. I do not even care for mocha ice cream. But, oh, do I love the smell of a fresh pot of coffee, especially in the morning!

Ellie Enderlin has the perfect nose for coffee. She had never set out to become a coffee buyer, but it is a career well suited to her. She can pick out the individual scents and flavors of varying coffee types and knows a good coffee bean when she comes across it. During her most recent business...more

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Oct 03, 2008 Anastasia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, fiction

I enjoyed this book about a woman whose sister is murdered and who spends a couple of decades significantly stunted as a result. It was set in my city, so it was fun to read about local sites and landmarks (even though she got a few things wrong). I also liked the unusual careers of the sisters, even though neither of them (coffee buyer and mathematician) interested me in the slightest. I thought the author built up a nice sense of anticipation and offered a satisfying resolution.

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Jul 25, 2008 Lorna rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was disappointed in this one. The review I read was good, and the person who recommended it thought the character development was great, but I didn't agree. I'd love to know what others think of this one. The story revolves around two sisters, one of whom is murdered. The surviving sister is devastated when a friend writes a True Crime type book about the event. The book follows her subsequent struggle to deal with her memories, find the truth and come to terms with her loss.

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May 09, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-may-read, 2012-read

Ellie and Lila were two sisters, with little in common. Ellie was more outgoing, Lila was more reserved. Lila was a math whiz and always knew where she was heading, whereas Ellie was never really sure what came next. However, there was always a bond between the two sisters.

One day, all that changed forever, when Lila was murdered. Ellie was distraught, and she confided in one man, who turned out to be the wrong man to trust. He ended up writing a bestselling true crime book about Lila and the fa...more

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Nov 19, 2009 Carmen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own-it, arcs, won-it

This story is told with such emotion and real thought that it took me by surprise. Once I started, I found it really hard to put down as I really wanted to know the truth about Lila's death. Michelle Richmond's story at first glance seems like a mystery that the sister of the victim will solve. But it feels like more than that. She brings elements of math, astrology, science and literature together to compliment the storyline. The relationships in the book are also beautifully written and each p...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, contemporary-fiction

I love Michelle Richmond’s writing style. Her novels are character-driven but there’s always some super plotty element… missing child, unsolved murder, etc. In this Ellie is still reeling from her sister’s death, even decades after the fact. A chance encounter has her opening old wounds and reexamining everything she thought was true. So though this is about a murder, it’s more about relationships and the way people react to big events in their lives.

I love when characters have an occupation not...more

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Feb 24, 2012 Deb rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, mystery-thriller

Ellie, a coffee buyer, looks for the truth about the murder of her older sister Lila, twenty years prior. Lila, a student and brilliant budding mathematician, turns up missing one night and her body is found in a wooded area a few days later. Ellie, needs to talk about Lila and try to deal with her grief but is unable to connect with her parents. She confides in one of her English professors, Andrew Thorpe, who she considers a friend until he writes his career-making first true-crime novel about...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Cathy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Normally I don't read books like these.... Which is why I am in a book club... to make me expand my horizons and read things I normally wouldn't read. That being said, this was the latest book we are reading for our book club.
It was a quick read. A bit of a murder mystery type of thing. So that aspect kept me intrigued. That and the fact that it takes place here in the San Francisco area.... Nothing like reading about certain landmarks and knowing exactly where they are in the city!
It will be...more

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Jun 23, 2010 Marie desJardins rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this book about a woman whose older sister, a mathematical genius, disappears; her body is found in the woods a few days later. The betrayal she feels when her English professor, who she has confided in after her sister's death, turns her sister's story into a true-crime novel, is absolutely wrenching. The characters -- from the two sisters to the various friends and lovers who are tied in through the story -- are quite believable. Even relatively minor characters like the owner...more

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May 08, 2009 Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading The Year of the Fog by the same author last month, I was delighted to be asked to review No-One You Know. Although I did enjoy this story, for me it wasnt as good as the previous one.

No-One You Know is the story of two sisters and narrated by Ellie, the younger sister. Lila, the older sister, a maths prodigy was murdered twenty years. At the time of her murder Ellie grew very close to her English teacher and confided her feelings in him. He, in turn betrayed her and her family by w...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Rebecca-claire Turner rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I picked this book up on a whim as there was a discount at a store nearby me, and I'm glad I did. Just as a side note, this will contain spoilers and basically recount the novel itself, condensed.

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The book is written from the point of view of Ellie; a 38 year old coffee buyer who lost her sister Lila, a maths genius destined for great things in tragic circumstances at the end of the 1980's. Her grief was compounded by a book that was released about her sisters murder by somebody she had tru...more

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About Michelle Richmond

Michelle Richmond is the author most recently of NO ONE YOU KNOW, as well as the international bestseller THE YEAR OF FOG, the award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, and the novel DREAM OF THE BLUE ROOM. Her new novel will be published by Bantam in March of 2014. Her books have been translated into ten languages.

Michelle grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and makes her home in N...more

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“A story, after all, does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.” — 4 people liked it

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