Of the migrants she thinks they hold “the power to take a woman, to transform her, to turn her life that was growing smaller all the time into an existence that was dark and mighty.” We meet a young mother, newly housebound - the wife of a detective on the case - who misses her job deeply, who finds solace in watching (and fantasising about) the migrant construction workers across the street. Through these characters we learn about this remote community and the racial tensions that divide as elsewhere. They are not caricatures or cliches - they are all of us. And here we can heap praise on Phillips - a novel with a breadth of wonderful (though at times frustrating in their bleakness and longing and sorrow) woman characters. I would say 'just read it - the writing is irrefutably good'.Įach chapter in the novel is about a different woman, with some - perhaps hard to extrapolate - connection to the missing sisters. If I was to describe the book quickly I would say 'it's like a collection of short stories, each chapter with different characters', 'it's mainly about Kamchatka - and what a fascinating, complex and intimately drawn place it is'. What else is happening in this long year? What else does it mean for the peninsula - the strangers and the locals and those from away and those who have no idea who the girls are? What else is this place made of - Kamchatka - a place where two girls will play happily while their mother works, in one stroke, and in the next be victims of an unimaginable crime?

It doesn't fit into any pre-carved box but rather strays from the beaten track to explore what else. This is not a crime novel - not a police procedural, though there are police, not a thriller with action bursting off every second page. Taken, they disappear and cannot be found despite the smallness, the insular nature of the peninsula.Īt this point the story veers dramatically away from familiar literature.

Shortly after leaving the beach they are taken by a strange man in a nice car. This opening chapter, titled August, describes the events - tragic, quiet - of a month that begins a year long search for the sisters. They are doing normal sister things - watching the sea, telling stories, passing the time while their mother is at work. It begins with two sisters, Alyona and Sophia, who are at the beach on their own in the school holidays.

Disappearing earth book review