 First edition | |
| Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Gothic |
| Publisher | The Mysterious Press |
Publication date | 2023 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 297 |
| ISBN | 978-0802125057 |
48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates published in 2023 by The Mysterious Press.
The work was awarded the Prix Fitzgerald in 2025. [1]
The novel is presented in forty-eight numerically consecutive short chapters organized in three sections. Each chapter opens with an italicized word, term, date, or phrase that may serve as a clue. The novel has no table of contents.
The 30-year-old Marguerite Fulmer disappeared unexpectedly from her father's exclusive estate in upstate New York on April 11, 1991. Beautiful and accomplished, the talented sculptor and college art instructor leaves behind only enigmatic hints as to her whereabouts.
Her younger and less attractive sibling, Georgene, serves as the misanthropic narrator who seeks to unravel the why and wherefore surrounding Marguerite's disappearance. [2]
Critic David Pitt at Booklist calls 48 Clues "another masterpiece of storytelling...A thematically and stylistically ambitious novel that displays the author's literary gifts to their maximum effect." [3]
New York Times literary critic Sarah Weinman rates 48 Clues "subpar" among Oates's crime genre fiction: "[W]hat could have been an unnerving tale is marred by truly puzzling stylistic choices (so many parentheticals, one after another!)." [4] [5]
Reviewer Laury A. Egan at New York Review of Books reserves special praise for Oates's disaffected narrator, the "emotionally disturbed" younger sister, Georgene Fulmer
In 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister, Oates has added another disturbing character to her bountiful cast of strange people and devised another chilling work, one that will slot into the vast canon for which she is justly renowned." [6]