Men appear, of course, but none of the stories is told from a male character’s point of view. The first is that the protagonists of the various stories are all women. The stories have a couple of characteristics in common, both of which-perhaps because of the fragmentation created by the multiple story structure-creep up on the reader unawares. The structure renders her two-page character list at the beginning of the book unnecessary: it is easy enough to work out who is who as people drop in and out of each other’s stories. This is not just cleverness-and it is indeed very clever-for it allows Phillips to introduce a varied cast of characters of Tolstoyan dimensions. There is no central narrative: the pieces come together through tangential connections. Most notable, perhaps, is that Phillips has constructed her novel as a series of connected short stories, each one of which could easily stand on its own. This might have been a foible or affectation-Phillips spent time in Kamchatka as a Fulbright fellow-but Disappearing Earth is nothing if not deft. A story that might have been set anywhere, but Julia Phillips sets hers in Kamchatka, one of the remoter parts of Russia’s remote Far East. Two young girls are snatched off a city street the crime ripples through the wider community.
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