In The Afterglow of THE DISAPPEARED

I am reeling.  I write this in the afterglow of what is not only the last book I will read in 2011, but also the very best.  Kim Echlin’s novel The Disappeared is about a girl, Anne Greves, who falls in love with Serey, a Cambodian musician forced to leave his homeland when the Khmer Rouge regime takes over.  Anne is sixteen when the love affair begins, then a decade later, she goes to Cambodia to find the man she loved, and who loved her.  I have rarely, if ever, found a love like Anne and Serey’s in the pages of a novel.  I read it quickly, as if the book might disintegrate in my hands before I could finish.  The Disappeared is so beautiful and so painful; the passion and love makes the tragedy and pain possible, or perhaps it is the other way around.  Either way, this is an exquisite book.  It reminds me of what a novel can be.  And it will stay with me for a long, long time.