I'm reading ... Disappearing Earth

At its heart, Julia Phillips’ debut novel is a mystery. Two young girls, sisters, are taken away in the car of a stranger after spending an aimless day exploring a near-deserted shoreline on the outskirts of their city. That the city is on the far eastern coast of Russia, the Kamchatka Peninsula, gives the book an added layer of unknown.

It’s not often that you get a work of fiction by an American writer set in a place that you know absolutely nothing about. But for me, and I suspect for most readers, that’s the case with Kamchatka. Forget everything you think you know about remote Russia – that it’s backward, rural, retrograde. This is a fascinating setting, with clear parallels to our own lives here. People go camping for the weekend with the latest gear, they bicker with their colleagues at office jobs, they vacation at resorts. There is a proud Indigenous culture that is at the same time celebrated and discriminated against.

The story of the sisters’ disappearance fades somewhat after the first chapter, but it is always in the background, as Phillips tells the stories, chapter by chapter, of the people on the periphery of the mystery. Some of them are linked to each other, and some of them have the faintest connection, a sighting or a friendship with another of the subjects. Together, these profiles mesh to give a full and detailed view of how this disappearance unfolded, and what happened after.

By coincidence, I read this book immediately after reading Miriam Toews’ Women Talking, set in another remote location, an isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia. There are similarities between the two novels. They’re both told through the voices of women, they’re both trying to unravel a terrible crime, they both shed light on the unique vulnerability and strength of women in the world. Toews’ book has stayed with me in a way that no novel has for a very long time.

Disappearing Earth is a satisfying read, detailed and illuminating, with an ending that pulls the various threads together in a gratifying way. I admire Phillips’ willingness to take a risk in format, to trust her readers that they will follow, and understand what she’s trying to do. It works.