The Disappearing Act [en]

It took me a while to find this book by Russian author Maria Stepanova. In general, it takes me an hour or more to find books by international authors, because I first do a few general searches (« what are the best recent novels by a Russian author » for example), and then I look for books or authors that appear in more than one search. I then check the reviews in Goodreads (for example here) and usually hesitate to get books that average less than 4.0/5.0. Sometimes I do a search by authors, so I’ll check Goodreads and other reviews about these authors’ different books. Then, if I think I found something I want to read or listen to, I’ll check Audible. Sometimes it’s available there, but I usually discard anything that takes longer than 15 hours to listen to. If it’s not available there, I check Indigo (the Canadian Fnac), and if it’s not there either, I’ll finally check on Amazon. Sometimes, it’s way too expensive or I simply don’t find it anywhere. And so I start again with another search.

This time, the Goodreads average was not great, but I am more lenient with international books, especially from countries that are not really our friends, like Russia. I think it’s harder to understand foreign books, translations, foreign cultures, and we are all a bit biased against people from certain countries. So I got this one, because the topic really interested me.

In short, M, who is a writer, comes from a country that recently invaded another country, and she feels great shame about it. I think she lives in B. (likely Germany). One day, she’s invited to give a talk in F. and finds out that her train has been cancelled. She finds herself in an unknown city without any means to reach anyone anywhere, and so she thinks about how she could reinvent herself, start a new life.

I really liked her thoughts about her identity and how she can’t get rid of it, even though she is ashamed of her country. She realizes that she can’t even get rid of her own language, the language in which she writes, and that really it shaped her identity. She talks about what her readers say to her, their questions, like « why aren’t you doing something to stop your country from invading this other country? » and how it is often difficult to find convincing answers.

The ending was weird and unexpected, and I could have liked it, but I didn’t like the fact that she didn’t return to her initial thoughts about her country and identity. Things just got stranger and stranger and then that was the end. I like circles, when authors stay close to (or not too far from) a central idea. In this case, I haven’t found that satisfying ending. Maybe it’s the point, maybe life is just a never-ending string of random stuff happening, good and bad and weird, without a satisfying ending until the very end. I have to think more about this book. Maybe that’s what makes it successful.