DISAPPEARING EARTH by Julia Phillips

DISAPPEARING EARTH

by

Julia Phillips

            Disappearing Earth is Julia Phillips’s debut novel. It was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award.

            At the beginning of the book, two sisters living on the Kamchatka peninsula in far eastern Russia, ages eight and eleven, were abducted. The police investigation was unsuccessful, and the book, like the world, moved on from there.

            I did not like Disappearing Earth. I wanted to quit on it in the beginning, when it became apparent that the abduction was going to occur. But, because the book had been a National Book Award finalist, I decided to continue. The only thing that changed by the time I reached the end of the book was that my dislike of it had grown.

            After the abduction, the book seemed to jump around from short story to short story. To be fair, I listened to the audio version of the book. Although the narrator did a fine job with the reading, I think that format made it more difficult for me to follow the story. I had difficulty distinguishing some of the Russian names. So, I was bit surprised to later learn from the publisher’s description that the characters were all connected by the crime. Perhaps if I had read the text, I would not have missed that vital connection. In addition, the lives of each of the characters seemed miserable and bleak. Phillips’s descriptions seemed to support every preconceived, pejorative idea I have ever held about life in Russia. Again to be fair, perhaps I should not have undertaken this book in the midst of a pandemic.

            I obviously missed whatever literary value this book has that resulted in its consideration for a National Book Award. In my opinion, it was a negative reading experience.