The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Date of Publication: June 15^th, 2010

Memorable Quotation: “So Mitch and I were…happy, yes, but happiness isn’t what people think it is. There is no synonym for ‘happiness’ that could possibly describe the entirety of a life shared by two people…” (pg. 165)

Lasting Impression: Strong concept but poorly executed, The Nobodies Album shows the story of Octavia Frost, a writer and mother trapped in the past, who must face her own personal demons when her son is accused of murdering his girlfriend.

Storyline: A

Pace of Story: B-

Characters: B+

Ending: D

Overall: C+

I became a huge fan of Carolyn Parkhurst after reading Lost and Found and The Dogs of Babel because of her great mix characters and her philosophical undertones of what it means to be alive.  The Nobodies Album, however, was so unorganized and confusing at times that the only reason I finished it was because she had a good hook of a storyline and I wanted to give an author I respected a chance to win me over again.  (Unfortunately, I was greatly disappointed and left saying, “What?” when I finished it.)

The Nobodies Album has a great opening chapter, immediately showcasing Octavia’s personality and situation: a bold writer whose life falls apart after reading a headline about how her son, Milo Frost, lead singer of the band, Pareidolia being accused of murdering his girlfriend, Bettina Moffett.  The story continues with Octavia flying to California to help prove the innocence of her son as she shares the ideas of her latest novel, The Nobodies Album, with her readers.

The novel Octavia writes is interesting because it takes the ending from each of her previous novels and rewrites them, giving her characters another chance to react differently to what happens throughout her novels.  At the end of a few chapters, Parkhurst inserts a section of one of Octavia’s novels, which at first I thought was a good idea but quickly became irritated with this notion because her endings and rewritten endings had nothing to do with the original story.

The other problem with putting these chapters of Octavia’s novel into Parkhurst’s novel was that it deters the reader from the main storyline.  The endings are focused around Octavia’s thoughts and past, which makes the original storyline, her son’s murder mystery, fall by the waste side!   If Parkhurst were to put Octavia’s chapters in an appendix at the end of the book, that would have made the story flow so much better and not made the readers obligated to read these chapters. 

There is a lot of stream of conscious thinking on Octavia’s part that, once again, I did not think was necessary because it seemed to only be taking up space and not providing any true insight into anything.  When Parkhurst did have characters interacting and the what-ifs of the murder began to arise, the story became exciting! Unfortunately, the build up of suspense was not met with a satisfactory ending, only one that was long-winded and reminded me of another murder mystery I had reviewed with the same kind of ending, The Other Woman’s House by Sophie Hannah.

I do not mean to sound like I despised the novel, because I did not. I am frustrated that such great concepts with wonderfully realistic characters were put into a story that was so unorganized that they could not be seen at their full potential. Carolyn Parkhurst is still one of my favorite authors and I do appreciate when an author takes a chance in his or her writing but it has to be organized, and unfortunately, this one was not.  If she were to have cut out a good amount of the Octavia’s stream of conscious thoughts and, as I said previously, put Octavia’s chapters in an appendix, the characters would have shined more and the murder mystery itself would have been so much more organized and suspenseful.

~Shelly-Beans