Isabella’s Not Dead

The sparkling latest from Morrey (The Love Story of Missy Carmichael) follows a woman with boundary issues and too much time on her hands as she searches for a long-lost friend. After spending a weekend in the country with friends from school, Gwen, 53, becomes obsessed with tracking down her former bestie Isabella, who fell out of touch with their friend group 15 years earlier. She visits Isabella’s reserved parents, and their cryptic comments (Isabella “values her privacy.... After everything that happened”), coupled with the espionage podcast she’s been listening to, convince her that Isabella is a spy. Consumed by the case and annoyed with her neglectful husband, she follows a lead to Rome. As she gets closer to the truth, she learns as much about her own weaknesses and preconceptions as she does about Isabella, and she begins to find her way toward a life of “color and vibrancy and dynamism and excitement.” With its wild goose chase plot and quirky cast of characters, including Isabella’s “modest, restrained, and faintly apologetic” parents and Gwen’s mother-in-law, “a gold-plated, X-rated, permanently aerated March Hare,” the novel moves briskly along, and there’s plenty of wisdom about long-term friendship and midlife crises beneath the fizzy surface. It’s a rewarding tale of second chances. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary. (Aug.)