I just finished reading ‘Disappearing Earth’, the debut novel by Julia Phillips and I loved it. The novel has been well-received – one of New York Times 10 best books of the year, finalist for the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics’ John Leonard Prize. A Best Book of 2019 by Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, NPR, Kirkus, Vanity Fair, Variety, Esquire and many others.
The book is set on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula where, one August afternoon two young girls go missing. In the ensuing months police investigations and volunteer searches turn up nothing.
What follows is a novel in the form of overlapping stories about women who are affected directly or indirectly by the disappearance. The book takes us through a year in Kamchatka – an odd place with no road connection to the rest of Russia because it was a closed military reservation during the Soviet period. There is one major city – Petroplavovsk and a number of small villages – many inhabited by the indigenous people who herd reindeer and visit the city in the winter.
Phillips does a wonderful job not only of delineating the scenery of forests, mountains, volcanoes and stark vistas of snow and ice but also the stories of the women who have all experienced loss in one sense or another. The disappearance of the two Russian girls which is exhaustively investigated is contrasted to the earlier disappearance of an native girl which is hardly noticed by the authorities. It turns out they are related.
It’s a wonderful, well-written book and I urge you to give it a try. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. HERE is the NYT review.
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