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110th out of 155 books
—
82 voters
The Disappeared
by
Kim Echlin
A sixteen year old girl falls in love with a Cambodian student.
A revolutionary closes the borders of a country for four years.
Families, friends, lovers disappear.
Kim Echlin’s powerful new novel tells the story of Anne Greves, from Montreal, who meets Serey, a Cambodian student forced into exile when he cannot return home during Pol Pot’s time of terror. Anne and Serey me...more
A revolutionary closes the borders of a country for four years.
Families, friends, lovers disappear.
Kim Echlin’s powerful new novel tells the story of Anne Greves, from Montreal, who meets Serey, a Cambodian student forced into exile when he cannot return home during Pol Pot’s time of terror. Anne and Serey me...more
Hardcover, 224 pages
Published
March 3rd 2009
by HAMISH HAMILTON CA
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The Disappeared disappoints
A review by Ben Antao
The reason I chose to buy and read The Disappeared, the 2009 Giller short-listed novel, is that I expected the author Kim Echlin, 54, would supply a few insights into the Cambodian war of the 70s and 80s. Instead, the story turns out to be a search for a Montreal woman’s lover, a Cambodian student with whom she falls in love at the age of 16. After Serey returns to Cambodia in the 80s to find his family, Anne Greve travels to Phnom Penh to find he...more
This was amazing. Beautifully written, the novel follows a Canadian named Anne as she travels to Cambodia to find her lost lover after the genocide in Cambodia. While very hard-hitting, and as so many others have said, haunting, I could not put this book down. I grew very attached to Anne as she retold the story of her and her lover, Serey. I highly recommend this novel, it was an engaging love story, that also brought to light the horrendous slaughter of millions of people in Cambodia under the...more
It feels like something of a disservice to Echlin’s novel to lump it in here among five other books, because the novel is exceptional in every way. It’s epigraph reads “tell others,” and the whole novel urges readers to take seriously (for N.) their collective responsibility to read/hear the stories of others and to act whenever and wherever injustice is done. Far from heavy handed in this moral, the novel beautifully (really, really, I try not to overuse this word so that in the rare instances...more
I read this book a few years ago and it is still on my mind. Kim Echlin writes with haunting prose that draws you deep into the emotional and physical pain of Anne and Serey. Echlin takes the pair across the world when Serey realizes he needs to find his family, and Anne realizes she can’t be without Serey any longer.
Anne and Serey might be the most compelling tale of love that I’ve ever read. I fell in love with them as they fell in love, and was heartbroken by their separation when Serey retu...more
Anne and Serey might be the most compelling tale of love that I’ve ever read. I fell in love with them as they fell in love, and was heartbroken by their separation when Serey retu...more
Initially I found the writing style difficult to read. But after a few chapters I got into the rhythm and ended up loving this book. It is a story that begs the age old question of is it truly better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. This is also a story of political upheaval, family drama, friendship and loyalty. Some of Echlin's passages are heartbreakingly beautiful to read.
Even though the story focuses on a small group of characters, I felt the story gave a true sense...more
Even though the story focuses on a small group of characters, I felt the story gave a true sense...more
This book was on the short (but not so sweet) side. I had no idea what to expect when I first started reading other than I thought it would be a stereotypical love story that would allow me to easily read between the lines. However, I was wrong and I’m okay with that. The book itself is extremely moving and it stays with you. I’ve been done reading it for about two weeks and I still think of some of its passages and situations on a regular basis. While reading the novel, I thought about how easy...more
This love story spans decades but rather than being a story of the love between a man and a woman it is more a tale of a woman’s love for her man and his for his family and his country. The country in question is Cambodia and a great deal of the story takes place during the reign of the Khmer Rouge and the atrocities known as The Killing Fields.
The story begins when Anne Greves, a 16 year old Canadian schoolgirl who has recently lost her mother, falls in love with Serey, a 21 year old Cambodian...more
The story begins when Anne Greves, a 16 year old Canadian schoolgirl who has recently lost her mother, falls in love with Serey, a 21 year old Cambodian...more
If you're in the mood for a good cry, this is the book for you. "Seriously sad" are the words that come to mind when revisiting my reading of it. The title, of course, suggests the novel's tragic subject, but I admit I was unprepared for the unleavened nature of its depression-producing content. Which is not to say that there's anything wrong with a "downer" book. In fact, I believe that it's important to represent in non-fiction and fiction the sorrow and loss integral to life. But when there a...more
Jul 16, 2010
Louise
added it
Recommends it for:
Everyone
Recommended to Louise by:
Chapters
Shelves:
literature-fiction
This was a beautiful story of the power of love, the grief and indecency of loss, and the strength and potency of the human spirit to keep going amid dangerous and perilous conditions.
Anne Greves is a sixteen-year-old living in Montreal, Canada when she meets Serey, a Cambodian who is 5 years older than she is and a musician. Immediately they begin a passionate, sexual relationship. One day Serey decides to return to Cambodia to find his family whom he hasn’t heard from in over a year. A daring...more
Anne Greves is a sixteen-year-old living in Montreal, Canada when she meets Serey, a Cambodian who is 5 years older than she is and a musician. Immediately they begin a passionate, sexual relationship. One day Serey decides to return to Cambodia to find his family whom he hasn’t heard from in over a year. A daring...more
I don't usually read these Canadian literary blockbusters, but something about this book attracted me: perhaps its brevity and the brevity of most of its chapters. And a couple years ago, when I checked myself into one of the hotel rooms at the Banff Centre for the Arts, my time there happened to coincide with a translation conference. One of the authors there was Kim Echlin, along with the English-to-Chinese translator of her novel The Disappeared. I checked out a panel on translation; I crashe...more
Although this story takes place against the backdrop of the devastating Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia, it is not so much a social commentary on that dark era as it is a beautiful, haunting, tragic love story. It's a story of love and loss, reunion and separation, loyalty and betrayal, sacrifice, secrets and longing.
Narrated by Anne Greves, a 16 year old who falls in love with Serey, a Cambodian musician living in Montreal during the Pol Pot regime, it is written in essence as a love letter to Se...more
Narrated by Anne Greves, a 16 year old who falls in love with Serey, a Cambodian musician living in Montreal during the Pol Pot regime, it is written in essence as a love letter to Se...more
i read this book in 2 days. I was skeptical when i rented it, thinking it may be a shallow love story about a western girl with an exotic oriental boy...well, i was pleasantly surprised. not all good books win awards and are highlighted in the press. some u just stumble upon.
many stories have bbe written about the horrors of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. what makes this different is it is written as a recollection of events, by a Canadian girl. her relationship with a Cambodian student begins...more
many stories have bbe written about the horrors of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. what makes this different is it is written as a recollection of events, by a Canadian girl. her relationship with a Cambodian student begins...more
A brief, and somewhat reductive, way of describing this book is that it is about a young Canadian woman (Anne) who falls in love with Serey: a university student and musician, and a Cambodian exiled from his country during the Pol Pot regime when the borders are closed. Once the Vietnamese invade, Serey returns to his homeland, desperate to discover if his family survived. Years later, when the UN is overseeing the transition to democracy in Cambodia, Anne journeys to Cambodia seeking the man sh...more
- The sparse prose of this book really killed it for me.
- I was looking forward to reading something moving & interesting, especially considering the heavy & heinous topic Echlin is trying to bring to light, but I barely had any empathy for the main character. As a reader, this ruins the reading experience.
- While I understand the intent behind so-called "sparse prose" from writers, I usually find I can't connect to this style. I know a lot of it is "read between the lines" and it's supp...more
- I was looking forward to reading something moving & interesting, especially considering the heavy & heinous topic Echlin is trying to bring to light, but I barely had any empathy for the main character. As a reader, this ruins the reading experience.
- While I understand the intent behind so-called "sparse prose" from writers, I usually find I can't connect to this style. I know a lot of it is "read between the lines" and it's supp...more
1. One thing I greatly enjoyed about this book was that the narrator, Anne Greves, who is also the main character in the book, seemed to be telling the story to her deceased lover, Serey. The story was about their experiences together from her point of view, giving you more insight into Anne's feelings and emotions. Another enjoyable aspect of the book was the amount of historical information revived in the book. Their relationship developed during a great time of turmoil for Cambodia, and Anne...more
This book begins in Montreal and traces a woman's 3 decade love of her soul mate from Canada to Cambodia. Anne Greves is 16 years old, when she first meets Serey, a Cambodian student and musician in a jazz club in Montreal. Serey has been forced to leave his country by his family during the Khmer Rouge regime. Shortly after he leaves, the borders to Cambodia are closed and he cannot return. Serey does not hear from his family while he is abroad. As soon as the borders are opened, he goes back to...more
Ein unbeschreibliches Buch. Ich finde es schwer die richtigen Worte zu finden, um es gerecht zu beschreiben.
Es geht um Anne Greves, die als 16-jähriges Mädchen eines Abends ihre große Liebe trifft, bei einem Blues Konzert in Montreal. Serey ist 5 Jahre älter als sie und obwohl der Vater dagegen ist, werden sie ein Paar und genießen ihre Freiheit zusammen. Serey ist im Exil. Er kommt aus Kambodscha. Als eines Tages die Grenzen zu seinem Land wieder geöffnet werden, reist er kurzerhand zurück, um...more
Es geht um Anne Greves, die als 16-jähriges Mädchen eines Abends ihre große Liebe trifft, bei einem Blues Konzert in Montreal. Serey ist 5 Jahre älter als sie und obwohl der Vater dagegen ist, werden sie ein Paar und genießen ihre Freiheit zusammen. Serey ist im Exil. Er kommt aus Kambodscha. Als eines Tages die Grenzen zu seinem Land wieder geöffnet werden, reist er kurzerhand zurück, um...more
Jul 24, 2011
Shirley
added it
Kim Echlin's third novel, The Disappeared, has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize this year, and it richly deserves that honour. Set in Montreal and Cambodia, the novel takes place during Cambodia's brutal Pol Pot regime (1975-1979), the Vietnamese occupation (1979-1989) and United Nations Transitional Authority period that followed. This is a powerful love story about Anne Greves, a young Montreal girl and Serey, a Cambodian exile who originally came to Canada to study, but cannot return to...more
I took my time reading this and I am glad I did. Not only does this book reveal the story of Cambodia in detail but Echlin does a job in telling the story of loves lost and found then taken away again.
Page 182:
The road grew rougher. We jostled forward and I watched a young mother squatting beside the road, eating her evening meal, holding her baby. I had no baby to hold. What would she do if solders came up to her and grabbed her baby? The Buddha said, Hatreds, do not ever cease in this world by...more
Page 182:
The road grew rougher. We jostled forward and I watched a young mother squatting beside the road, eating her evening meal, holding her baby. I had no baby to hold. What would she do if solders came up to her and grabbed her baby? The Buddha said, Hatreds, do not ever cease in this world by...more
I had a really hard time with this book at the beginning--it's written in a combination of the first and second-person points of view, and there are no quotation marks, which at times made it difficult for me to figure out who was saying what. And I didn't find the love story very interesting at the start--the part that takes place in Montreal. But once Anne Greves ends up in Cambodia and begins her search for Serey, and meets Will and Mau, I really got immersed and had a hard time putting it do...more
I just started reading this novel and it gripped me almost immediately. Already I can tell that there is the making of an amazing love story. I love the narrative style and it draws you in. Very poignant.
A young Canadian woman falls in love a Cambodian refugee in Montreal.However, he is haunted by his parents and his younger brother who he has left behind in Cambodia. He decides to go back and look for them and never returns. Almost 10-20 years later the young woman goes in search of him. They f...more
A young Canadian woman falls in love a Cambodian refugee in Montreal.However, he is haunted by his parents and his younger brother who he has left behind in Cambodia. He decides to go back and look for them and never returns. Almost 10-20 years later the young woman goes in search of him. They f...more
This is a really unusual novel about the Pol Pot era in Cambodia, and a Canadian woman's search to find her Khmer lover. The author very vividly describes places in Phnom Phen which I saw too, and this is probably why I enjoyed the book so much. Also, she tells the story of the genocide very well. The only problem that I had was that the viewpoint character abandoned all sense, so crazed was she about her lover. So some of it was a bit much for me -- the romantic fixation, that is. Given that al...more
A tragic story of a couple and a country that will manage to touch your heart and still give you some educational background on Cambodia's genocide. It's not a cheesy romance novel by any means. Anne and Serey feel like a real flawed couple. The point of view tends to make the relationship feel a little too one-sided on Anne's part and Serey more detached, though I believe that was intentional. Anne was a young, naive Canadian while Serey is continuously haunted by the atrocities that happened t...more
this is the story of a young canadian girl who falls in love with a cambodian in exile only to lose him (and find) him in Camboida. It's wonderfully written and hard to put down. I liked the Montreal part of the story and the description of their young love very much. Once we shift to the cambodian part, it's still a gbripping beautufil tale, but it didn't feel quite "right". I think one of hte many themes of the book si that grif, loss, love, tragedy are univeral and so her own pain could be co...more
A young Canadian girl falls in love with a Cambodian student who is effectively exiled by war. When he is able to, he returns to Cambodia and they lose touch. She eventually goes to Cambodia to find him.The story is told so evocatively in the first and second person - I was instantly drawn into their story. While this is not intended as a historical treatise on the Kmehr Rouge, there are many brutal descriptions of things as seen through the eyes of the young couple. If you were looking for more...more
This is the sort of book that begs to be read and discussed in detail by a book club or college class. I might have rated it higher after hearing other readers' impressions. Failing that, "The Disappeared" left me feeling very sad and quite hopeless.
The story is about genocide, told from the perspective of a young Canadian woman who fell in love at the age of 16 with a college student from Cambodia. A dozen years after he returned to his country she set off in search of him.
Echlin is a lyrical...more
The story is about genocide, told from the perspective of a young Canadian woman who fell in love at the age of 16 with a college student from Cambodia. A dozen years after he returned to his country she set off in search of him.
Echlin is a lyrical...more
This book sucked me in and had me staying up late to keep reading. It is written in a floating, lyrical style that is a little disarming at first. I wasn't sure what was unfolding as the storyline but found myself continuing to read to try and understand. Echlin puts you inside the head of a teen girl (and young woman as the story continues) as she navigates a powerful first love. The twist comes as she travels to war-ravaged Cambodia to try to preserve the love. Suddenly, you're in both a love...more
I hesitated to begin reading this book because I feared, as some other reviewers have mentioned, that it would be a honey-wrapped romantic tale of a naive girl looking for her man. The Disappeared is much more than that, although you will follow along a story of blind, dogged and entirely devoted love.
Although Pol Pot and the Cambodian genocide are subjects of which I've heard, reading this book has inspired me to learn more about this time. It haunts me to think that this fictional account took...more
Although Pol Pot and the Cambodian genocide are subjects of which I've heard, reading this book has inspired me to learn more about this time. It haunts me to think that this fictional account took...more
This book was so beautifully written. Although, not for the fair of heart with the relentless stuggles the characters endured with the Cambodia horrors.
It is a love story. The first heart broken in this book his her fathers. Any parent worries about their childrens choices.
The book reminded me how I used to wear my high school boyfriend clothing. I remember how mad that made my parents.
The author has written some beautiful passages in this book. And I do read to be enlightened and hopefully lear...more
It is a love story. The first heart broken in this book his her fathers. Any parent worries about their childrens choices.
The book reminded me how I used to wear my high school boyfriend clothing. I remember how mad that made my parents.
The author has written some beautiful passages in this book. And I do read to be enlightened and hopefully lear...more
This story is not for the faint of heart, as there is a lot of brutality and injustice, but the love story is over-powering and obsessive in contrast. Think "Wuthering Heights", "Romeo & Juliet", "Of Human Bondage". But transfer the setting to Montreal and Vietnam of the 80's and 90's after the war. It's exotic, beautiful, realistic and tragic at the same time. My only complaint (and this is minor) is that the narrative is written in 2nd person, ie.: " you met me and. . . " I don't think I h...more
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| CBC Books: The Disappeared by Kim Echlin | 20 | 42 | Sep 29, 2012 09:33am |
Kim Echlin was born in Burlington, Ontario. After completing a doctoral thesis on Ojibway story-telling, she travelled in search of stories through the Marshall Islands, China, France, and Zimbabwe. On her return to Canada she became an arts documentary producer with CBC's The Journal, and a writer for various publications.
Her first novel, Elephant Winter, won the TORGI Talking Book of the Year A...more
More about Kim Echlin...
Her first novel, Elephant Winter, won the TORGI Talking Book of the Year A...more
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“People do not really change; we are only undefeated because we have gone on trying.”
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“A soul protects itself from what it cannot bear.”
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