
Disappearing Earth
A novel
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Narrated by:
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Ilyana Kadushin
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By:
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Julia Phillips
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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
“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)
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"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.
Why did I need to meet all of these characters?
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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)
book? interesting. Audible? missed
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Unforgettable
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Very good….not great!
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The anti-thriller that breaks your heart
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summer read
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Spell binding
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Long and wordy. Hard to stay with it.
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Takes some concentration but worth it
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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.
The setting is completely unique!
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