Disappearing Earth
A Novel by Julia Phillips
Knopf, 2019
purchase
Description
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 eleven--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.
About The Author
Julia Phillips is a Fulbright fellow whose writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Atlantic, Slate, and The Moscow Times. She lives in Brooklyn.
Reviews
"Invigoratingly hard to classify . . . A dead or missing girl is such a common device in crime fiction that its use now prompts raised eyebrows. But Julia Phillips ingeniously dismantles conventions. [Set] in a volcano-studded peninsula in Russia, this novel builds a portrait of a place, as the disappearance of two sisters shapes and is refracted through the lives of women. As remote as this world is, readers will find it strangely familiar. Phillips's characters fight to steer a course between the twin hazards of loss and captivity. Young mothers chafe at the confinement of family responsibilities, craving risks their older counterparts dread. For Phillips, the intricate web linking her characters--bonds that can suffocate, sustain, or expose--is not a mystery to be uncovered by a solitary detective. The ending of Disappearing Earth ignites an immediate desire to reread the chapters leading up to it . . . What appear to be fragments, the remains of assorted personal disasters and the detritus of a lost empire, is in truth capable of unity." --Laura Miller, The New Yorker
"An assured and engrossing debut that starts off as a thriller but then turns into a deeper exploration of the lives of women, and the way violence affects women's lives, on the peninsula of Kamchatka. You're pulled right in from the opening chapter." --Pamela Paul, The New York Times: "Summer Reads, Recommended by Women of The New York Times"
"Julia Phillips is at once a careful cartographer and gorgeous storyteller. Written with passion and patience, this is the story of a people and the land that shapes them. A mystery of two missing girls burns at the center of this astonishing debut, and the complexity of ethnicity, gender, hearth and kin illuminates this question and many more." --Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
"A miracle of structure, premise, and content, this ingenious debut spins out the narratives of twelve different women over a year to explore the way the disappearance of two young white girls unearths the suppressed racial tensions of a Russian peninsula. Reindeer herders, ballerinas, avalanches, volcanoes . . . Phillips's luring writing will transform Kamchatka from a place you've never heard of to a place you never want to leave." --Courtney Maum, The Rumpus
Related Books
