Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

 

Amy    

fiction

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips is really a book of short stories, each telling the story of a different person during a different month in the year following the abduction of two young girls in a Russian coastal town.

I almost put this book down after realizing the girls were being kidnapped.  These sorts of stories just break my heart and I don’t need more worry and strife these days.  But since it was a book club book, I persevered.  Thankfully, it didn’t dwell on the girls after they were taken. But the worry I held for them persisted in my brain throughout. I couldn’t stop envisioning what was happening/could have happened to them. This is not the sort of theme I like to read about. I generally avoid crimes toward children and women. It feels too possible and scary.

The only other novels I’ve read that take place in Russia centered around world wars. This novel was set in the present which made the aspect of learning about Russian society interesting. Surprisingly, I was able to relate to most of the characters. Their lives didn’t feel so different from those of Americans. There was very little commentary about politics in the novel. Russians thrive as best they are able with much more freedom than I imagined. They have the same issues with childhood, parenting, and romantic relationships as the rest of us. This was enlightening. And yet, there were differences, obviously.  The most noticeable to me were 1) the detective’s willingness to speak about the case to someone not directly involved with it or suspected of the crime, 2) in the hospital, a patient was asked to strip while the doctor was in the room, was supposed to bring their own medical gown and was asked to move rooms completely naked since there was no gown, and patient care and transparency was lacking, and 3) the fact that gay people are treated even more harshly there than they are here.

I thought the stories were so cleverly interwoven. Nothing was overly obvious but characters popped up in each other’s stories casually. Sometimes we learned more about them which was fun.  I wondered throughout if we were meeting the man who stole the girls in one of these stories.  One came to the forefront in my list of potentially guilty men. I thought the ending was appropriate and well-done. Truly, the whole thing was well done. But, since I did not enjoy the subject matter, I cannot rate it as highly as I might have otherwise.

The narrator, Ilyana Kadushin, was a good voice actor but had only a little variety between character voices. I appreciated her Russian pronunciation. I give her a B.