Ordered Chaos: 48 CLUES INTO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MY SISTER (2023)

Originally posted May 24, 2024.

For the ache of mystery is that we are compelled to solve it.

For the frustration of mystery is that we are not always able to solve it.

You might argue that a “literary thriller” which has the veneer of crime fiction but is actually an elaborate character study, such as 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister by Joyce Carol Oates, does not belong on a detective fiction blog. To which I say: it’s my blog and I get to choose the mandate! Let’s get into it. 

48 Clues revolves around the Fulmer sisters, Marguerite and Georgene (referred to by the de-gendered M. and G. both in their lives and in the narration). M., the older sister, is a beautiful, talented heiress and Guggenheim Fellow sculptor, whose apparently charmed life makes her abrupt disappearance all the more baffling. Unremarkable younger sister G. is “sturdy as a turnip,” works at a post office, and has a history of severe mental health issues.

One morning, M. heads out to her teaching job at the local women’s university, but does not arrive. Boot prints in the snow lead from the family mansion to the nearby forest trail, and her only missing possessions are her usual tote bag and watch. The last person to see her alive is G., who caught a glimpse of M. doubly reflected in a mirror while brushing her hair. G. is as proprietary of her sister as she is vociferously jealous, Merricat Blackwood by way of Montresor. “To be a (greedy, voracious) younger sister is to know all,” she opines. A reader might well wonder if the ignored younger sister killed M. herself, for reasons of envy or money or passion, and G. mockingly addresses the possibility early on:

Yes but maybe there is a diabolical scenario in which the calculating Gigi, wielding the boots in question, ingeniously managed to create boot-tracks leading from the rear of our house into the no-man’s-land where the tracks became “lost” in a series of other tracks. […] For no one (except the younger sister) reported having seen M. that morning.

Eventually, we are even presented with a scene that seems to depict G. killing M., or perhaps a mouse, or both. A whole string of interested persons seem to go conveniently missing—perhaps to end up in the Fulmer basement? Still, we doubt. Could a young woman really get away with triple homicide by burying bodies in shallow graves inside her own house? A later incident of arson is explicitly re-contextualized as a fantasy. All we have to go on are the clues which G. uncovers, hides, elides.

The eponymous “clues” are less material evidence than topics of rumination, or perhaps ideas of reference. G., who demonstrates several traits associated with the schizophrenic spectrum (flat affect, paranoia, dislike of social interactions, unusual speech, aural hallucinations, extreme reliance on routine) admits that as a result of M.’s disappearance she has “come to believe in “signs”—specifically, signs sent to me, indecipherable to anyone else.”

There is another significance to the clues: the book’s title and structure mirror the title of an art exhibit, “Clues into the Disappearance of…” by M.’s self-styled mentor and G.’s enemy (under the circumstances, I hesitate to use the term “nemesis”), the male artist Elke. A foil and antagonist to G., Elke paints his subjects in harsh detail, eliding no flaw or pimple, which G. calls “obscene”. But her narration shines just as harsh a spotlight on everyone she meets: their motivations are suspect, their peccadilloes caustically highlighted, their positive qualities ground into insignificance. People are either “bullies” or “hypocrites”. M. is not spared: her irritating personal habits and desire for attention, especially from men, make her a hypocrite in G.’s eyes, and maybe a bully, too.

And yet, we catch glimpses of an M. (the real M.?) that doesn’t seem to have been understood by anyone else. Both M. and G. shy away from being gendered as women, for reasons of misogyny, sexual violence, gender nonconformity, and breast cancer. M. had a sly side: she bought couture fashion used at consignment stores, her abstract sculptures are secretly low-poly faces and breasts. She rejected prestigious grants and residencies, without letting anyone know, to take care of her younger sister. You might argue that G.’s view of “the Princess,” remorseless and even cruel at times, gives her a more sharply-rendered humanity than her image as a disappeared, angelic murder victim.

Some readers dislike stories that purport to be mysteries but have ambiguous endings (I do too, sometimes). I maintained about The Aosawa Murders that you get more out of it if you worry less about the murder than the psychological mystery of why the two central women behaved the way they did. 48 Clues is similar: we are never told exactly what happened to M. (although to my mind there are only two possibilities remaining at the end), but between the lines, you can uncover a portrait of M. that is deeply sad, lonely, perhaps angry, certainly sympathetic. I felt satisfied with my understanding of the reasons for the characters’ behaviour. At one point, G. flips through M.’s sketchbook, where, unlike her abstract sculptures, she has drawn caricatures of the people in her life. G. is shocked that the picture of herself has captured her pain and rage. G. is not the most affable narrator, but through her impressions of her sister’s impressions of her, we get a sympathetic portrait of her, too—a doubly-reflected image.

If you view the detective story as a story about restoring order, then perhaps by framing M.’s disappearance as a mystery novel (even one in which the narrator is the surprise culprit), she is imposing a meaning on a story with no “point” that she can’t make sense of—or rejecting a tragic story that she can fully make sense of. “How terrible to realize,” G. narrates, “that the world is a chaos of clues.” While it’s open-ended, we still stand outside the story and sift through the clues, decide which points are clues. There is no order to be found here, but there is comprehension.