Whitcoulls Recommends: The Nowhere Boy and It Could Have Been Her

The Nowhere Boy by Anne Cleary. This book won the Allen and Unwin fiction award, which is a hugely contested New Zealand fiction prize. A Dad takes his 3 year old boy to the beach and leaves him in the car while he unloads fishing gear to a site some distance away - and when he returns to the car, his son is gone. He’s been found by a woman who has suffered the loss of children and can’t believe her luck - that there’s a young, seemingly abandoned boy who she can take home and into whom she can pour all her love. But of course the situation is not that straight forward, which she soon discovers as the search for him grows ever more intense.

It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell. Jane Trevally is newly divorced and one night agrees to go home with a man she’s only just met - but she gets a bad feeling in his house and runs away. Years later, she finds herself on the trail of a missing girl, and traces that girl back to the same house in which she found herself 25 years ago - a place with a dark atmosphere and sinister secrets. As she investigates what might have happened, she realises that, if she hadn’t left that place, it could have been her. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks edb Books with Witkeles for the best
selection of great reads.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
It is time to talk books and I'm joined by
Joan mackenzie Headbook by at Wickles. Good morning, Good morning,
You've got a book for us by Anne Cleary. To
start off, I do I do?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
This book last year won the annual Allen and Unwin
New Zealand Fiction Prize so at one in twenty twenty five,
and now it's published in twenty twenty six, and I
can see why it won because it's the story of
people who could be you or me. Actually, it's got
a real New Zealand sensibility to it, with characters who
I found entirely believable, and it's the sad story about

(00:50):
one day a dad takes a three year old son, Oliver,
who everybody affectionately refers to as Appleman, to the beach
and while he's unloading fishing gear to a site which
is a bit of a distance away, he comes back
to the car to find that the child has disappeared,
which point, of course, the police are eventually notified, and
then the poor guy has to tell the kid's mother

(01:11):
that he's gone, which isn't a call any of us
would want to make. And while the search intensifies, we
see that little apple Man has been picked up by
a woman knowing Tessa, and she's very judgmental. She feels
that clearly this was irresponsible parenting, and it's given her
this golden opportunity to have a child, because she's suffered
miscarriages and stillbirths, and she's always wanted a child of

(01:33):
her own, and she's all set to pour all of
her love into this little boy. But you know, three
year olds, as you might remember, they have their own
ideas about things, and he quite reasonably wants mum and dad,
and she finds it managing him isn't quite the easy
thing that she'd anticipated. And meanwhile, of course, Appleman's family
are becoming increasingly desperate, dreading the worst. There's talivised appeals

(01:55):
to try and get him back, and his very very
young parents are just trying to get through it. I'm
not going to ruin it for anybody who would like
to read this book, which I do highly recommend, but
I will just say again it felt entirely believable. To me,
because these are people caught up in the most awful
of circumstances, and it could have been you or me.
You know, we all make errors of judgment.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
I don't know why, but I want to compare it
to a Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevillion. He's just in
the sense of creating that very relatable time and place
almost yes, absolutely right, yeah, okay, which also from Melo
won the same prize. Ah, yes, of course, yes, there
we go. Tell me about it could have been her
by Lisa Jewel.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well, she is a master of suspense. I think. This
is her twenty seventh novel, I think, and it's a
really dark, twisty one told across several timelines, which I
sometimes find quite irritating, but she pulls it all together
really well, and by the end it all makes perfect sense.
It's the story of Jane, who's a woman who's been
married and divorced twice and she's living quietly on her

(02:58):
own in the countryside, and one day she comes across
a dog which appears to be lost, and with the
help of the local vet, they can scan a chip
in dog. She figures out that it's a long way
from its home, which is on Hampstead Heath in London
and apparently has been staying nearby with a young girl
who's now gone missing. And Jane fancies herself as a
bit of an amateurs sleuth, and so she goes off

(03:20):
to visit that address in London and then gets this
terrible realization standing out in front of it, that it's
exactly the same house to which she went twenty five
years ago in this really scary episode when she met
a bloke at the pub who invited her home, and
when they got there and he was busy trying to
offer her a drink, she realized something was terribly wrong

(03:41):
and she managed to get out. And now of course
she's back looking at this place, trying to track a
missing girl, and she starts to uncover the secrets of
that house, which has quite a lot of them. There's
a relatively small cast of characters including the inhabitants of
that house and their stories, and it really is very suspenseful.

(04:02):
You know that something dark and scary has been going on,
and she starts pulling it all into the light. And
of course the title comes from her own experience all
those years ago. It could have been her okay, all right, So.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
The two box that Joan spoke about today with the
Nowhere Boy by Anne Clary and it could have been
Her by Lisa Jewel. But on a slightly lighter note,
the kids voting for the Kid's Top fifty is open.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yes, the wit couse Kid's Top fifty. Yes.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
So these this holiday you can either pop into Wickles
or go online to wit cals dot co, dot m
Z and please curt in the family, can't.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
They Yeah, please get your younger people to tell us
what their three favorite books are and we'll put them
all into the mix. And then in September we'll announce
what the new wit calls Kid's Top fifty is.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Quite for twenty qu hard just picking three.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
It can be challenging.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, there we go. Something to do these school holidays.
Thanks so much, Joan.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.