DISAPPEARING EARTH by Julia Phillips

This novel opens with the abduction of two young girls, age 8 and 11, but the subsequent chapters are just as compelling, the most gripping of which involves the disappearance of a beloved dog.  The setting is a remote Russian peninsula where various characters lament the dissolution of the Soviet Union, deeming the past to have afforded a measure of security as a welcome byproduct of its rigidity.   Each chapter is a separate story of a woman who lives on the peninsula, and the ties that bind them are revealed near the end of the book.  Unfortunately, I lost track of a few of them, but others stand out in my memory.  One is about a college student torn between two very different men.  Another is about a woman who fantasizes about having sex with migrant workers as an antidote to her humdrum life as a wife and mother.  One woman flees to her hometown because her otherwise decent boyfriend has allowed their home to be flooded with icy water due to broken pipes.  All of these women experience loneliness and grow frustrated by their lives’ limitations.  Particularly exasperating is the lack of urgency that one would expect on the part of the police with regard to a third missing girl—a teenager with an unsavory reputation.  One of the chapters is devoted to a young woman who witnesses the abduction of the younger girls but does not realize at the time what is happening.  The police hound her for a more explicit description of the man who lures the girls into his car, and then they ultimately discount her story entirely.  Amidst so much sorrow and ineptitude lies a sense of community, and I am reminded of the words we have heard so often during the pandemic:  We are all in this together.  However, some of us are in deeper and more tragically than others.