Disappearing Earth

A novel

De: Julia Phillips

Narrado por: Ilyana Kadushin

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year

National Book Award Finalist
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award

National Best Seller

"Splendidly imagined... Thrilling" (Simon Winchester)
"A genuine masterpiece" (Gary Shteyngart)

Spellbinding, moving - evoking a fascinating region on the other side of the world - this suspenseful and haunting story announces the debut of a profoundly gifted writer.

One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls - sisters, eight and 11 - go missing. 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.

Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. 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 brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.

©2019 Julia Phillips (P)2019 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Mesmerizing.... The mystery of two sisters’ disappearance alternately ebbs and intensifies over the course of a year, [as] each chapter dips into the life of a different girl or woman [on] Kamchatka. The story reads as a page-turner without relying on any cheap narrative tricks to propel it forward, and the strength of Phillips’s writing - her careful attention to character and tone - will grip you right up until the final heart-stopping pages.” (Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair)

“Accomplished and gripping.... The volcano-spiked Kamchatka Peninsula in Far East Russia, where the tundra still supports herds of reindeer and the various Native groups who depend on them, is the evocative setting of Phillips’ novel. In fresh and unpredictable scenes depicting broken friendships and failed marriages, strained family gatherings, and rehearsals of a Native dance troupe, Phillips’ spellbinding prose is saturated with sensuous nuance and emotional intensity, as she subtly traces the shadows of Russia’s past and illuminates today’s daunting complexities of gender and identity, expectations and longing.” (Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review)

“A superb debut - brilliant. Daring, nearly flawless. A crime jump-starts Disappearing Earth; the novel exposes the ways in which the women of Kamchatka are fragmented not only by [a] kidnapping, but by place [and] identity...Phillips describes the region with a cartographer’s precision and an ethnographer’s clarity, drawing an emblematic cast.... There will be those eager to designate Disappearing Earth a thriller by focusing on the whodunit rather than what the tragedy reveals about the women in and around it. Phillips’ deep examination of loss and longing is a testament to the novel’s power.” (Ivy Pochoda, The New York Times Book Review)

Why did I need to meet all of these characters?

I'm quoting a previous reviewer who couldn't have said it better.
"There are just way too many voices in this story. Each vignette is very well written. But it felt relentless, one after the other, having to meet new characters and get inside their heads, only to abandon most of them completely."
I liked some of the characters we meet early in the story, but by the end I wasn't sure why they were introduced at all. If there was a connection to them in the end, I missed it.

book? interesting. Audible? missed

this book review has more to do with audible. where the heck are the book notes at the end?
I realize once again after a book club meeting that audible does not provide the acknowledgement, or book notes, let alone discussion questions (in this book there may not have been any discussion questions)

Unforgettable

Marvelous language; great story; mystery with unexpected twists; richly drawn characters; a spiritual journey; exciting and unexpected ending. Among the best books you will ever read by any author. And, the audio version narration is tops!

Very good….not great!

Enjoyed the time jump narrative and the narrator was talented…didn’t care for the ending after such a buildup

The anti-thriller that breaks your heart

There is so much to love about this novel. The structure, the prose, the heart. But it is the combination of everything that makes Disappearing Earth a special book. In the hands of a lesser writer, the structure of DE might feel wandering or disconnected, but not with Phillips. Phillips guides us around the rock of the disappearance of two girls as we discover just how far the waves of such an act can reach. Its a beautiful book, beautifully narrated. Cannot recommend enough.

summer read

More characters than I could audibly track, but a pleasant story. Our book group choice per NY Times review.

Spell binding

A wonderfully narrated story filled with suspense and great life lessons about what to believe in. Only struggle was the Russian names but that was probably good for me

Long and wordy. Hard to stay with it.

Not my favorite. Good characterizations but story not strong enough. I can't recommend this book.

Takes some concentration but worth it

I enjoyed the short-story type chapters and the way the characters had their own story but also tracked through other chapters. Less than 6-degrees of separation. The story was set in an area I know nothing about and appreciated learning a bit about it.

The setting is completely unique!

I entered this one expecting a dark and deeply sad mystery novel, but I got something that was so much more. There was a lot about this book that I loved and one of the primary things was the setting. I knew nothing about the Kamchatka peninsula and I found the culture of it and the isolation caused by its geography extremely interesting. 30 years ago I minored in Russian and Russian studies. As part of one course I completed a project on the reindeer herding indigenous people featured in this book, which made the book even more fun, though I was sad to see the same prejudices against these natives of Russia that we deal with against the natives of the USA.

In Disappearing Earth two young girls, sisters who are eight and eleven years old, go missing. The police are quickly called to investigate but they find nothing. The only evidence is an unreliable and minimal description of the girls in a car. They are just gone. Without a trace.

One of the things that worked best in this one is the structure of the book. Each chapter focuses on a different character and takes place in consecutive months after the girls' disappearance. Over the course of a year we are slowly let into the mindset of a witness, a detective, and several others. The final chapter is focusing on the mother of the two girls. The story is moving and sad, and I kept hoping that the mother's grief and worry would end. I am a mom, and these types of stories are difficult to take.

The ending was especially good. It was a big pay off for investing in the story.