Disappearing Earth
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.
Set on the remote Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth draws us into the world of an astonishing cast of characters, all connected by an unfathomable crime. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty — densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska — and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.
In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel provides a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.
Author: Julia Phillips | Publisher: Knopf
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Rating: 5 / 5
“Revmira moved to a room in a friend’s apartment. To keep herself sane, she had to keep going, so she gave away their wedding presents, the dishes they ate off, the clothes he saw her wear, until the only scraps left of their life together fit in one buckled bag. She finished her degree, found a job, paid her bills, made her dinners. She watched Gorbachev speak about openness and change on her television. And all the while she was screaming. She never stopped. In her mind, she was still twenty-one and ten months and two days, and it was just after seven in the morning, and Gleb had been lying next to her an hour before.”
Disappearing Earth is — as you may have heard by now since it was shortlisted for the National Book Award — a stunning debut for Julia Phillips. I don’t know where she’s been or what took her so long, because she writes in a voice that you cannot look away from.
The novel reads more like connected short stories, each told from the perspective of a different person in the remote peninsula of Kamchatka, Russia. It begins in August with two young girls, who are kidnapped by a strange man near a busy city center. Every chapter that follows — one for each month for an entire year — features a woman who lives nearby. Each woman’s circumstances and story are different, but each has been affected in some way by the kidnapping, which is the thread that weaves them together. Eventually, the book builds to an exciting, page-turning conclusion that left me in a puddle of nerves.
What was most impressive to me was that while each story was left open-ended, it was never frustrating or dissatisfying. She gave you space to let you finish it on your own, however you thought was best or most likely. Normally, I don’t like it when authors do that to you, but in this case, it felt authentic and right and almost even hopeful.
I highlighted so many small passages, fragments of sentences, that hit me as just such amazing writing choices. Julia Phillips uses conjunctions and metaphors and language like an exacto-knife, so precise and clean. It lets her build a big, full, round character even in so few pages, and it creates a rhythm that won’t let you go.
A masterpiece of character, point of view, setting, and plot, all in one. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.