Her involvement with Emily-a woman she met once, for a few minutes-makes little sense, and the reveal at the end only makes it more implausible. Supposedly an experienced actress, she reads like someone plucked from the street and dropped into Hollywood’s orbit, and her constant surprise at the excessive luxury heaped upon her is grating. Mia has a frustrating lack of complexity all her auditions become opportunities, and she's inexplicably naïve. Despite an engaging central mystery-what happened to Emily?-the rest of the novel doesn't hold up. Mia's desire to see the items safely returned sets off a hunt for the missing woman, taking Mia's focus away from work at a critical time in her career. When Mia gets back, however, Emily is gone-leaving her keys and wallet behind. When Emily is called in to audition, she's worried that her parking meter is about to expire, and Mia offers to run outside and feed the meter for her. While she's waiting for her second reading, she starts chatting with Emily, a fellow actress who's up for the same part. ( From the publisher.An up-and-coming actress risks her career to find a missing woman, discovering the dark side of Hollywood's glamour along the way.Ĭoming off a big film role and an unexpected breakup, British actress Mia Eliot heads to Los Angeles for pilot season and a string of big-name auditions.

In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.

We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty-densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska-and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls-sisters, eight and eleven-go missing. Spellbinding, moving-evoking a fascinating region on the other side of the world-this suspenseful and haunting story announces the debut of a profoundly gifted writer.

Characters in disappearing earth