Songs For The Missing is one of the more uncomfortable novels I’ve read all year. It’s almost too real. Too close to something we know and hold close to our hearts. Almost invariably we know someone too similar to Kim Larsen. As the weeks pile up and the cadaver dogs are called in we cannot help but feel the helplessness of the Larsen family. What if it were us that this was happening to?
Monthly Archives: September 2009
2009 Connecticut Book Awards
A biography of a prominent Hartford clergyman and a novel about the devastating effects on a family when their daughter suddenly disappears are among the winners of the 2009 Connecticut Book Awards.
Stewart O’Nan won the fiction award for his novel “Songs for the Missing.”
Dreaming of Pittsburgh
On the eve of the G-20 summit, a native son finds a city moving toward the future but longing for its past.
When President Obama announced that Pittsburgh would be the site of the upcoming G-20 summit, even Pittsburghers were surprised. Like a stunned and overcome beauty pageant winner, we honestly never dreamed we were in the running. 
Summits are held in international capitals like London or Helsinki, and while we understood that we weren’t the first choice—for some reason, New York was booked—we were still puzzled, and a little worried. Were we really big enough to handle a summit? And, far more important, how would the rest of the world see Pittsburgh?
The Works of Stewart O'Nan 