The World Before Us

by Aislinn Hunter

This book is written by a Canadian but takes place in England.  It is the story of a young woman, Jane, who is carrying around a big burden of guilt.  As a young girl, 15, she was accompanying a widower and his daughter on a trip into the countryside.  The man was doing some research about plants, the girl was supposed to be minding the little girl and she is playing a game with the girl but gets momentarily distracted and the girl disappears and is never found.

The young woman feels guilty because the girl disappeared, she also feels guilty because she had a juvenile crush on the man, and daydreamed about him.

When the story opens the young woman is working as an archivist in a small museum in London.  The museum is being closed down because of lack of funding and she is helping to log and disperse items that have been sold.  She will be losing her job and is understandably upset at this prospect.  She is even more upset about the fact that William, the father of the girl who went missing, will be coming to speak at the museum about a book he has just written.  She longs to see him again but also fears it.

The museum is actually the result of the research and collecting of one British man.  The museum is located in his home, which has been converted to a museum with all sorts of biological specimens and other curiosities including a whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling.

Aside from her work at the museum, the girl has been working on research about an asylum near where the man's daughter disappeared.  In the late 1800's two patients walked away from the asylum and wandered over to a local estate where they were invited to come in and have tea before being returned to the asylum.  She learns that both men returned but is puzzled by another note saying that "N" is missing.  She is curious as to who N is and what happened to her.

While she is wrapped up with wrapping items, thinking about the disappearance and William she is also puzzling about the Asylum incident.  While she is working/thinking we find out that she is surrounded by a number of spirits/ghosts. They seem to follow her around.  We don't learn their names, they don't see each other but know who is there by doing role calls, referring to each other by nicknames, boy, girl, poet, theologian, etc.  The spirits enjoy looking at the exhibits, hoping that they or the girl will help them to figure out who they were in life.  Some items seem to resonate with them.  They seem to hope that if they find out who they were they will then no longer be in this suspended state.

The day of William's speech arrives and Jane listens to it.  She is surprised by some of the  things he says about the life of the museum creator and his acquaintances, he seems to give some things very short shrift.  She is surprised to learn that he has remarried and has a little girl.  It seems that he has gotten on with his life, something she has been unable to do.  When she encounters him he doesn't recognize her.  She slaps him on the face and runs from the building.

She leaves town in a hurry, leaving her cell phone behind, borrowing the family car, but not telling anyone what she is doing or where she is going.  She leaves for the little village near where the little girl and woman N disappeared.  She signs in at the hotel under a pseudonym.  She then proceeds to the local archives to try to find out more about the truth about N.  She examines asylum records and also letters and diaries of the family that own the estate.  She visits the estate which is under restoration to be a museum and meets a young gardener who shows her around.  She tells him she is a trust researcher and tells him her false name.  The young man is a much younger than her but seems to really fall for her and they have sex.

She finds out that one of the two escapees died a short time after his escape.  She later learns that he was killed at the estate he had visited previously by one of the men of the estate.  She figures out that N was an employee at the asylum and then went to work on the estate.  She also learns that there was an affair between one of the men of the estate and the wife of another man.  As she is doing her research some of the spirits seem to figure out a bit more about themselves, for example the theologian determines that he was a school teacher who had an affair with the other man of the estate.  We suspect that the "quiet one" might be N and I think the little girl may have been Jane's charge.

Eventually Jane tells the young man her true name.  He is shocked that he lied to her but still loves her.   The police arrive at her hotel room while she is out, not because she is in trouble, but because she has been reported as a missing person.  As the story ends Jane has given the young man her number in London, the spirits are still around thinking they are there to help Jane, not the other way around.  We never learn what really happened to the young girl, if she drowned or was killed.

I enjoyed the idea of the story and of the spirits hovering around but had expected some sort of resolution for Jane but that didn't seem to happen.  She did of course learn that William had chosen to live in the present, something she hadn't been doing.  An unusual and engaging, if somewhat unresolved story.