Not Long Ago Persons Found
A forensic anthropologist and her partner travel abroad in search of the truth behind a boy’s brutal murder in the feverish dystopian novel Not Long Ago Persons Found.
A seven-year-old boy’s torso is found in a city’s river with foreign pollen in his lungs and the remnants of his last meal still in his stomach. His head is found elsewhere. Tasked with determining how he died, the scientist and her partner travel south, to a nation long riven by political violence. At first, they take comfort in thinking that their home is better, but evidence of collusion and similarities between powerful people in both lands are soon revealed. The dangers the boy faced now stalk the couple, too.
Noting that “our civilization is sitting on trenches and trenches of murdered people,” the narrator catalogs his experiences abroad with the distrustful woman whom he calls his wife. Back home after a harrowing escape, they report to their shadowy handler in his Office of Circumlocution—a backdoor designation that changes to reflect their country’s shift toward fascism. As the anthropologist insists on the truth, the couple become personae non gratae to the institutions that once claimed them. They are shoved out of back doors and pushed toward uncertain futures. The narrator realizes that “The police know nothing … When they look at the river, they see only water. They don’t see the old events, rising up, the unsatisfied.” Nor do he and his partner fully comprehend what’s pursuing them until it’s almost too late.
Long bonds fracture as national façades crumble and entrenched cruelties are revealed in the startling dystopian novel Not Long Ago Persons Found.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
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