The author of Disappearing Earth offers a story of bleak prospects, poverty and illness, a sister bond with fault lines ready to crack open, and a slow build to a destructive end.
Along with their ill, bedridden mother, young-adult sisters Sam and Elena struggle to get by on an island off the coast of Washington.
Frustrated by the challenge of supporting themselves on Sam's pay from driving the tourist ferry and Elena's job bartending, the sisters dream of escaping to somewhere new.
But when Sam spots a grizzly bear swimming alongside the ferry--a bear that then shows up near their home--she is terrified. Elena chooses to see the bear as a sign of something positive, and she begins drawing the bear in with food and believing she is safe in its presence.
A wildlife expert offers assistance but threatens to drive a wedge between the sisters, and Sam is torn between wanting to protect her sister from this terrifying, deadly creature (and, jealously, wanting to destroy the bond Elena is feeling with it) and wanting to trust Elena's instincts and allow her to feel wonder like she has never experienced.
Their mother is failing, the bear is beginning to destroy their home, Elena is increasingly convinced of her connection with the beast, and Sam is shocked to her core when Elena seems to be abandoning the long-held plan of eventually leaving the San Juan islands with Sam.
The bear is a lumbering, drooling, stinking metaphor for the brutal truths set to implode Sam and Elena's lives. Sam has always believed she and Elena were a lifelong team, about to spring to freedom, whereas Elena never realized the half-truths and comfort she murmured to Sam when they were young have been taken as truth, against all evident clues to their grim financial status and how stuck Elena feels. Sam has always kept herself emotionally distant from anyone outside the household, believing this to be loyalty, but comes to understand that Elena has secretly been building bonds all along. Everything Sam has stubbornly understood to be true and real is suddenly coming unfurled and undone.
I took a really long time--unusual for me--to read this book, all the while dreading what feels like inevitable destruction barreling toward the sisters. The bear does ultimately shift everything for their family, and the story is brutal in its climax, yet glimmers of hope do emerge.
Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book?
I mentioned Julia Phillips's fascinating novel Disappearing Earth in the Greedy Reading List Six Chilly Books to Read in the Heat of Summer.
I received a prepublication edition of this title, which was published earlier this summer, courtesy of NetGalley and Random House.
Comments