Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Disappeared
    The Disappeared
    The Disappeared
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Disappeared

    Written by Kim Echlin

    Narrated by Tandy Cronyn

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Talented novelist Kim Echlin pens this "powerful, transcendent love story" (Publishers Weekly) about two young lovers torn apart by political turmoil. Anne meets Serey-a Cambodian refugee-in MontrEal when she is just 16 years old. But when the Cambodian border opens up for only a short time, Serey returns to find his family. For years Anne hears no news, so she finally travels to the devastated country herself in search of answers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateDec 10, 2010
    ISBN9781449847036
    Author

    Kim Echlin

    Kim Echlin lives in Toronto. She is the author of Elephant Winter, Dagmar's Daughter, Inanna: From the Myths of Ancient Sumer, and The Disappeared, which was published in seventeen languages, nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction.

    Related to The Disappeared

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Disappeared

    4/5

    124 ratings13 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Spare, beautiful, moving, sensual, haunting, disturbing. An incredibly well-written novel, a love story, a recounting of the atrocities in Cambodia, and every parents nightmare!
    • 3/5
      Although this book is well written, It did not draw me in. I found it hard to relate to Anne and Serey or their love story which seemed way too intense. I am glad to have more knowledge now about Phnom Penh and the Cambodian genocide that happened in the 1970s. The book was graphic in its violence which I also did not enjoy.
    • 4/5
      Set in the aftermath of the Cambodian massacres I was surprised that there were moments of joy in this book. Definitely worth a read.
    • 3/5
      This book is full to the bursting with beautiful, heartbreaking images. Echlin's unique use of language is unparalleled, and her ability to state simple truths that you felt were nearly impossible to put into words is uncanny.

      That being said, I personally did not jibe with the way the work was written. Though the prose is littered with these impossibly moving images, the stream-of-consciousness style of writing is not one that I tend to favor. The writing is very loose and utilizes a strange combination of directness and subtlety to tell the story. I wanted to be more involved than I was, but I felt distracted by excessive tangents.

      Beautiful story, beautiful words. I'd recommend it to people who are a little less finnicky than me about how they like their stories told.
    • 5/5
      This was undoubtedly one of the prettiest books about a horrific topic that I have ever read. The way she writes is gorgeous - it has the lyrical quality of poetry with perfect sentence construction. Actually, it had a musical quality to it as well - almost like she was lilting a little song in your ear.If it was a song though, it was the most heartbreaking song you have ever heard in your life. The description she gives of her intoxicating love with Serey is breathtaking and terrifying - particularly for someone with commitment phobia like me.I had to check several times to make sure that the author had not in fact written a memoir instead of a fictional novel. The way in which she described the genocide in Cambodia and the aftermath was shockingly accurate - having studied the genocide a bit I fell sort of qualified to make such a statement.The entire book was sensual and beautiful, which seems weird when discussing a book that made me cry several times. It is the simple truth though - this book was incredible.
    • 4/5
      A very poetic styleThis is a very powerful book, written in a rather poetic style, but while the content deserves 5 stars, I found the lack of speech marks and confusing use of language detracted from the whole.Although the short chapters made for an easy read, the content was both distressing and moving.The book is based around the horrors of the Pol Pot era, when the unimaginable number of two million people lost their lives. The story of Anne Greves's love for Cambodian Serey and her search for him amongst the horrors of Cambodia, seems to represent all the loss and grief that must have been suffered as people returned to something distant from their original lives, without their dead to bury.The lovers meet when Serey is studying in Montreal. The borders to Camboia are closed and Serey has no idea what has happened to his family. After the Vietnamese invade and Pol Pot is over-turned the full scale of the cruelty becomes evident. Serey returns to search for his relatives and Anne hears nothing more from him.A chance sighting of him on television many years later prompts her to fly to Cambodia in the hopes of being reunited - only to suffer loss all over again.This is definitely a must-read, I only wish I could give it 5 stars.Comment Comment | Permalink
    • 5/5
      What I learned from this book is that our North American life is so easy, peaceful, and full of rights. But there are countries, like Cambodia, which are so devasted by war that there is no such thing as wrong or right (like Sokha's choice to join the soldiers) and that survival is fickle.This book is amazing. Short enough to read in an afternoon, but so powerful it will stay with you. Unique POV, in that it is is first person, past tense, with another character as the audience (eg I did this, then you said that). Very effective.Read it.
    • 5/5
      A perfect bittersweet book about an horrific history. Echlin's writing is like poetry. This is a hauntingly poignant love story.
    • 3/5
      Anne Greves lives in Montreal. When she is a teenager (16ish), she meets Serey, a musician in his early twenties. Serey is Cambodian, and was sent to Canada by his family to escape Pol Pot and the unrest in Cambodia. Against her father's wishes, Anne develops a relationship with him. When the Cambodian borders reopen, Serey returns home to try to find his family. Anne does not hear from him. Years later after college (where she studied the Cambodian language), she travels to Cambodia and locates Serey. They build a new relationship and she becomes pregnant, eventually losing the baby. Serey is doing journalistic photography for the opposition to the government and is eventually killed at a rally. The government tries to cover up his murder and expels Anne from the country for investigating it.Short chapters, no quotation marks. Written from Anne's pespective. Written as if addressing Serey. Refers to Serey throughout as "you."Sex - RViolence - R
    • 5/5
      from p. 172"Why do some people live a comfortable life and others live one that is horror-filled? What part of ourselves do we shave off so we can keep on eating while others starve? If women, children, and old people were being murdered a hundred miles from here, would we not run to help? Why do we stop this decision of the heart when the distance is three thousand miles instead of a hundred?"A love story spanning several decades, beginning in Montreal where Anne falls in love at a young age with a Cambodian musician/student who cannot return to his country during Pol Pot's rule. When the borders are finally opened, he is compelled to return to try to find his family. Anne hears nothing from him for years, continues to love him, and learns the Khmer language, until one day she thinks she sees him as part of the crowd on a newreel. She decides she must go to Phnon Penh to find him. Here begins the story of the most tragic and traumatic kind of life this world has ever seen. The language is sparse ,poetic, but not indulgent. An unusual method of narration is used; Anne is telling the story of their love to Serey. Here is a random sample that gives a feeling for the tone:from p. 93Why is she afraid to sit with us, I asked.You joked, Maybe it's your accent.I did not understand then that everywhere people watched each other. And sometimes they told and sometimes they did not in this place that was not free.This is one of those stories that if you don't read it, you can forget that some things ever happened. It's more comfortable not to know, not to revisit the terrors that humans can inflict on one another. A love story, also a nudge to the conscience.
    • 4/5
      As an intrepid traveller and a proud supporter of Canadian Lit, Kim Echlin's The Disappeared definitely appealed to me and it did not disappoint. I won't retell the plot as other reviewers have already done so.One of the things that I liked about the novel, of course, were the settings in peaceful Canada as well as war ravaged Cambodia. I also liked the fact that the novel covered a significant part of the protagonist's life because we can see her as a young naive woman as well as a mature experienced woman who somehow has managed to preserve her love for her lover, Serey and her love for being in love. Usually I am not very tolerant of what I perceive as a gratuitous and self-indulgent poetic style employed by some writers, however, perhaps because The Disappeared is not a seemingly unending piece of fiction, the poetic nature of Echlin's writing does not detract but actually effectively enriches the portrayal of the protagonist's sensitive and ingenuous nature.
    • 5/5
      Summary: Anne Greves is a sixteen-year-old girl in Montreal when she meets Serey, a student from Cambodia who cannot return to his country because of the genocide. They fall in love, but when Cambodia’s borders reopen Serey goes back to find his family. When Anne doesn’t hear from him, she decides to go after him, and so begins her saga of violence and loss in wartorn Cambodia.Review: This is the second book in my goal to read the entire Giller 2009 shortlist. I read this after The Winter Vault and I can’t help but notice the similarities. Both are about a couple who experience separation and loss, both have stillborn babies, both are told in a fragmentary and poetic style, and both involve ventures into foreign countries. However, whereas I merely liked The Winter Vault, I loved The Disappeared. I think for me the political turmoil and brutality of the Cambodian setting made the difference. In The Winter Vault it was mostly just two privileged middle-class people having existential angst. But here is the kind of loss that moves me more deeply, the loss of friends and family and country.The Disappeared is short but absolutely heartbreaking. Anne’s love for Serey shines through the pages so desperately, and you want them to be together, but you know that Serey’s involvement in the resistance makes it impossible. There’s a sense of despair, a sense of ‘you can’t change anything about this’ whereas in The Winter Vault I always felt that the protagonists could get over their angst; they just choose not to.The pain, the fear, the disappearance of thousands of Cambodians. The question of how to continue loving someone even after they are gone. Echlin’s prose is simple but she knows how to choose the words that will punch you the hardest. I know I will want to read more about modern Cambodia after this (not that I wasn’t interested before, because I was, but my interest has been re-fanned, so to speak). It also makes me excited to read the other books on the Giller shortlist, especially the book that won, because if it beat this one, it must be pretty goddamn stellar.Conclusion: Heartbreak in 228 pages.P.S: Apologies for the excessive comparison with The Winter Vault. Reading them back to back sort of messed with my head a bit, haha.
    • 5/5
      The Disapeared by Kim Echlin is a book that drew me in with its strong, descriptive language and the first person narrator perspective the story was written in. Disappeared is presented as a fictitious memoir set mainly in the 1970's and 80's during the Cambodian genocide, the Vitnamese occupation of Cambodia and into the start of the United Nations Transitional Authority. The story starts in the jazz bars of Montreal Canada where the narrator, Anne Greves, meets and falls in love with Serey, a Cambodian student that is in exile in Canada due to the circumstances of the Pol Pot regime and the closing of the borders of Cambodia. When the borders re-open, Serey returns to try and locate his family, leaving Anne in Canada. A decade passes with no communications between Serey and Anne, and Anne makes the decision to fly to Cambodia to find him. The majority of the story is about Anne's time in Cambodia.Echlin's writing style presents the reader to a vivid display of Cambodia, the sights and sounds of a nation trying to rebuild, and the stories of horror that continue to haunt the people Anne encounters. It is a poignant emotional and thought-provoking examination of human nature's strength of will to survive in adversity and the horrors that the human race can inflict upon its own kind.