Cate asked:

This question contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

4 likes · like
4 years ago
8 answers

To answer questions about Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, please sign up.

Rachel Malli <spoiler>. Thank you so much for asking this! I find so much of this book unbelievable (in the sense that I truly cannot believe most of what is written in the book). Is Frank dead? I feel like that is what we are being lead to think.

When Bhajan says "The gymnastics meet... when I was twelve, is the last time I will ever see Frank", the use of the word will makes me think she knows that she definitively will not see him again, ever. But where did he go? Are we to presume that Chiara and the dad killed him? Did they send Bhajan and the mom back to Whole Foods for cereal because they were hiding a body? Why were all the lights off? It feels like the book built to this, the apex of the "plot" and then... nothing?

Like, honestly WTF? I'm not really faulting the author but this seems like a major plot point that an editor should have helped flesh out. Granted, I guess if Frank is never mentioned again maybe his untimely demise is not that big of a deal?? I'm quite confused. </spoiler>

flag

Erica

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Maria V. <spoiler> I was just about to ask this question, I was so confused and bothered by this also. And it's also never brought up again or clarified!

This is the language in the book surrounding that scene where something (?) happens to Frank, although whether they get him arrested, killed, or some other guess by the reader... we don't know:

pg 156 -- Chiara is on the phone with Frank and tells him not to go to the cops, and that they'll give him his passport. She hangs up the phone and makes eye contact with Bhajan, who "has no idea what's going on."

pg. 157 -- Bhajan comes home and the lights are out for some reason. Chiara is with dad in the kitchen and tells her to go straight upstairs. She hears a primal wail coming from her mother downstairs. Bhajan "has no idea what is happening"
She remembers when they were kids and Chiara would bait Frank, "teasing him forward... making him forget caution, forget to watch her. In the second he rushed forward, arm swinging, she dodged cleverly, and it's him that got hurt."
(No info except that memory... apparently Chiara baited him somehow?)

pg. 160 "We never talk about that night, or my brother again, and I know better than to ask. Some secrets are unspeakable. The gymnastics meet... when I was twelve, is the last time I will ever see Frank."

Talk about unsatisfying.

There's no mention of him later in the book except to say she misses him. </spoiler>

flag

Shari I thought about this multiple times throughout the rest of the book, I can't believe there's no actual closure here about her brother.

flag

Lisa Magee If it's a true story then I do not understand why the police have not spoken with her and tried to figure out who he was, who murdered him and where his body is. because of that, I do not believe this is a true story.

flag