Expectation

The author uses the events surrounding Kim Gillespie’s disappearance in order to explore notions of the expected and the unexpected. At the start of the novel, when Falk returns to Marralee a year after Kim’s disappearance, he finds himself haunted by the unsolved case. Just before heading to the festival grounds with the Racos for the appeal, he starts to doubt that anything will come of the event, as he “suspected he probably wouldn't have remembered anything much about those minutes at all if Kim hadn’t gone missing, but that was life. Insignificant things became significant unexpectedly” (18). Indeed, because everyone present at the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival the previous year was familiar with the event, all of the attendees had set expectations surrounding what the night would and would not hold. Kim’s disappearance was out of the ordinary and...