3.5 ( )

Setting the scene with a kidnapping of two young girls, this book has an ominous beginning and the suspense of the story grows as months pass and the story jumps to the perspective of many girls and women's stories across the Kamchatka peninsula.
This story sucks you in from the start and then kind of leaves you questioning as it cycles through a variety of perspectives and stories that can on surface seem almost unrelated. When the kidnapper appears in the book it's obvious, even though it's not directly acknowledged, but it doesn't take away from the suspense of the story as that is driven through trying to connect how all these women's stories are interwoven and connected to this crime.
This book accomplishes something rarely seen in crime dramas in taking the focus away from the perpetrator to the point of irrelevance and instead focusing on how it effects those left behind and the community. It also does an excellent job of portraying this heartbreaking story without ever being dark or descriptively traumatic, allowing the reader to fill it in for themselves or avoid it if that's too much for them.
Really interesting tactic of writing for this type of story and I quite enjoyed it, easily recommended. ( )

The majority of the book is a work of art in my opinion. Not sure how I feel about the ending but regardless, I strongly recommend it. ( )

I would recommend this book to others, but it was not what I expected when I read the publicity copy. Really, this is less of a novel, and more of a series of short stories. Each story features different characters from the same small, isolated town on the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia, and the book overall delivers a well-written and rich slice of life of the inhabitants of the town. That said, I would argue that while the disappearance of two young girls is the central event that ties these vignettes together, it is not the central feature of the stories, rather the book focuses more on exploring the life and environment of the people of Kamchatka. An alternative title to this one that explores more of the reverberation of the disappearance of children from a small town would be The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean, which comes out this year as well. ( )

What to say about this haunting book? To start, it doesn't fall neatly into any category. There is a disappearance at its core, but for the greater part of the book we see that mystery only obliquely through the stories of individuals, primarily women, whose lives have a tangential connection to the riddle of two girls who went missing.

The quality of the writing is so high that it merits consideration as literary fiction, as evidenced by its status as a National Book Award finalist. The book's structure is distinctive; each chapter reflects a consecutive month of the year following the girls' disappearance, seen through the lives of different characters whose interconnections emerge very gradually.

It could be considered travel writing, given the descriptions of the geography and people of the Kamchatka Peninsula. In far eastern Russia, much closer to Alaska, Japan and Korea than to Moscow or St. Petersburg and accessible only by plane or boat, Kamchatka's isolation is an ongoing influence on events in the novel. Socio-political history is another key element, as Phillips describes Kamchatka's residents' responses to the passing of the Soviet era, which offered security if little else, and the challenges of life under Putin.

And there is a definite feminist flavor to Phillips' compassionate treatment of the women whose stories are the heart of the book. Their lives are for the most part disappointing as they struggle to establish careers, relationships, and independence from cultural, political, and geographic constraints. The sadness of their endeavors to remain strong, to continue existing in a world of adversity and misfortune, pervades the narrative.

Although it took three or four chapters to become clear, I found the ways in which the characters are interconnected to be the richest aspect of the book, the most brilliant display of Phillips' gifts as a writer. Nothing heavy-handed, sometimes only a faint reference that comes across almost like a scent on a gentle breeze. It's there, but what is it exactly? How does it fit with the other pieces?

Brilliantly, as it turns out. ( )