
The environment, therefore, mirrors the confinement experienced by the various characters. The novel’s many characters are introduced in the preface, which calls to mind all those classic Russian novels with sprawling casts. Even Kyusha is unable to pry herself away from her controlling boyfriend, despite having moved away from him to attend university. INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A propulsive, emotionally engaging debut novel about the intricate bonds of family and community, in a. Phillips’s characters have deep humanity her portrayal of Kamchatka is superb. For example, Lilia and the Golosovskaya sisters are confined in Yegor’s house, Zoya feels trapped inside her own home while she is on maternity leave, and Nadia cannot escape the poverty and bad relationships that plague her. The isolation of the setting finds parallels in the experiences of many of the characters, who feel isolated by their particular circumstances. Kamchatka’s unique geographic and topographical characteristics isolated it during the Soviet era, a condition that only started changing after the collapse of the USSR. One wants to venture deeper, the other clings to shore. No cars or railways link it to the mainland, making travel largely water and air based. The first chapter of Julia Phillips’s superb debut, Disappearing Earth, begins with two sisters at the edge of a bay on a summer day. The peninsula has no ground connections to the rest of Eurasia. During an afternoon late in their summer vacation, the girls play near the water at the city center.


After their parents split, the sisters grow accustomed to occupying themselves while their mother is at work.

Hundreds of kilometers of mountains and tundra separate it from the Russian mainland. Sophia and Alyona Golosovsky are the two young girls who disappear at the start of the novel.
