52 pages • 1 hour read
Gillian McAllisterJust Another Missing Person
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Skylight
In their previous home, Julia and Art had a skylight over their bed. As part of their nighttime ritual, they would lay in bed and “look at the stars, debrief before sleep. Julia would tell Art her worries, and he would take them from her” (67). The skylight symbolizes the clarity and openness of their marriage and communications as well as Julia’s honesty with her husband.
Although they are separated, Julia and Art buy a house together. Julia is now alone in the master bedroom, which doesn’t have a skylight. She and Art “[settle] down to sleep on either side of a thin wall. Where, previously, they’d lie under the skylight talking, now, he goes to the spare room” (121). This shift shows the closed nature of their communications. She shut him out and is not telling the truth. Her worries remain her own, and instead of sharing a clear pane of glass, they share a wall.
At the end of the novel, Julia and Art move toward reconciliation. She opens up to him again and shares her troubles. He listens, and they fall into their old pattern of communication. The night before the trial, he tells her that he ordered “a skylight, just like at their old house. ‘To sleep under. And to worry under’” (367). After Julia’s honest confession, communication between them reopens, and the walls between them are removed.
Worry List
The “worry list” begins early in Julia and Art’s relationship. Julia is restless and anxious in bed, and Art persuades her to share her worries with him. He picks up a notebook, records each one, and then addresses each one, putting them to rest, telling her, “These worries are now mine. I will watch them” (120). The worry list symbolizes Art’s function in Julia’s life—he balances her high-stress profession with his calmness, mainly through his listening skills. Because of his lack of judgment, Julia is comfortable telling him her worries.
During their separation, this balance shifts. Julia shuts down communication with Art and doesn’t tell him about Genevieve’s crime or her cover-up. She regrets not sharing the truth with him, “the keeper of her worries” (122). She misses the worry list, which, beyond relieving her anxiety, was a source of humor and intimacy between them. Julia remembers a time when “one of the worries she had told him that night had been that she might have died of boredom in the theatre, and he’d laughed so hard the bed had shaken” (149).
Julia realizes how much she depends on Art to listen and take on her worries. Although she is not ready to tell him everything, Julia opens up by referring to their previous intimacy, telling Art, “I’d tell you, but it would become your worry, too” (122). Later, Art opens the door further, telling her, “You’ll figure it out, […] And if not—you can always send me a worry list” (269). Art responds to her tentative move toward connection by referencing the worry list. Not long after, Julia tells him the truth, and they regain the intimacy of honesty in their relationship.
Sea Air
Julia lives and works in Portishead on the Bristol Channel. The smell of the sea and the humidity from being near water are constant presences. Julia frequently refers to “Portishead’s ever-present damp” (11). Her house, however, is at the water’s edge, and the air is different there. The sea air symbolizes a shift in Julia’s perspective when she goes home. The freshness of the sea air releases her from the constraints of her work and the crime that she is steeped in downtown. When she comes home, she finds relief and comfort in “the sea, the salted windowsill, the constant, unerring waves outside” (269). Though the novel is set in winter, her windows are often open so that “Julia can hear the sea” (63). The freshness of the wind and sea air represents a shift from the damp, often stagnant air of downtown Portishead and the negative nature of the world she is in at work.
