Anywhere for You

In Greaves’s uneven sophomore effort (after The Silent Treatment), a London cub reporter gets personally invested in a human-interest story to the point of obsession. Alice Keaton observes Mary O’Connor standing nightly in the Ealing Broadway subway station with a sign imploring her erstwhile partner, depressed alcoholic Jim Whitnell, to come home after having left seven years earlier. Alice persists in trying to find Jim, even after Mary asks her to stop; it turns out Alice wants to give Mary the same sense of closure Alice found as a teen when she finally heard from her estranged father. Though she keeps her identity as a reporter secret, Alice also hopes the article she plans to write will save her job at the paper, which is facing budget cuts. Aiding her is Kit, Mary’s thoughtful—and attractive—co-worker at a telephone crisis center. Mary’s haunted by the fight she and Jim had the last time they spoke, and gradually the details emerge over what drove them apart. Greaves begins with a sense of mystery, but long, clunky passages of exposition keep the reader from getting invested in the characters, making the twists and turns fall flat. Despite its occasionally provocative sparks, this never really gets going. (Apr.)