Books where the central character is absent the whole time

Hello!

I would love to find a book where the character that drives the story is completely absent the whole time.
Something like Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier or Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett - Rebecca and Godot are absent for the entirety of the plot and yet the reader can still feel their presence throughout, and has to form their opinions on these characters solely from what the other characters in the story say about them.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

You could try the LibraryThing AI search for this.

I immediately thought of Franny and Zooey which has two absent brothers, Buddy, the living one, and Seymour, who committed suicide.

The AI search that I did came up with The Secret History, but if you used different search terms, I'm sure that you'd find others.

The Third Man by Graham Greene comes to mind, though the driving character is mostly, rather than completely absent.

Similarly, And Then There Were None, aka Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie.

I tried “absent title character” in AI search: the top hit was Miss Nelson is missing, and we also got The invisible man, which is maybe taking it a bit too literally…
It came up with Waiting for Godot, but also suggested Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, where the title characters are present, but Hamlet is rather in the background, if not totally absent.

I’m not sure why we got The great Gatsby, Catcher in the rye and The hobbit, but not Harry Potter: they all seem equally unqualified…

https://www.librarything.com/search.php?search=Absent+title+character&search...

Would We Need to Talk About Kevin fit what you're looking for? The Inquisitor's Tale fits what you're looking for in theory (the book is primarily told through characters at a bar talking about their interactions with the main characters), that concept isn't leaned into as much as with the other books you listed.

>4 thorold: Yes, the AI search is not giving me any good results either. Even Miss Nelson is Missing does not match since Miss Nelson is not a central character at all.

You might try Laura by Vera Caspary. Very close to what you describe.

Not precisely what's being sought, but I was deeply impressed how Sauron never appears in a scene. That's one element that no try-hard ever seemed to duplicate in the many Lord of the Rings knock-offs that followed.

>7 tealadytoo: Looks perfect, thank you!

Edit: (spoilers! but turns out Laura actually does enter the story about a third of the way through the book)