This novel was on Holly Black‘s list (published on Tor.com?) of good contemporary fairy stories. A 16 year old girl, Tara, goes missing, comes back 20 years later, but for her, it‘s only been 6 months. I liked the meditation on our reliance on context and the continuity of daily life to make sense of each other. When Tara comes back, she struggles to find her parents, brother, and first love in the people they‘ve become over the past 20 years.
I would have preferred it if the ambiguity was still there as to whether the fairytale was real or not. Having the old lady say that it happened to her sort or confirmed it to me. I liked the psychological aspect and think it would have been better to have turned out to be a psychological issue than true. It reminded me of Life or Pi.