The Disappeared

November 2, 2009
Canadian novelist Echlin (Elephant Winter
) derives a powerful, transcendent love story from the Cambodian genocide. Anne Greves, a motherless 16-year-old student, meets a Cambodian refugee, Serey, working as a math instructor amid the heady music scene of late-1970s Montreal, and they fall irredeemably in love. Serey's family got him out of Pol Pot's Cambodia, although he is waiting to be able to return and find them; Anne's father, a successful engineer of prosthetics, does not approve of Anne's exotic, older boyfriend, and when, as her father predicted, Serey leaves her, disappearing for 11 years, Anne journeys to Phnom Penh to find him. There she comes face to face with the terrible fallout of the collapsed Khmer Rouge dictatorship. The beautifully spare narrative is daringly imaginative in the details, drawing the reader deep inside the wounded capital city. Anne's single-mindedness drives the action, although her insistence on Western values of accountability knocks hollowly against the machinery of a ruthless military state. Echlin employs some implausible romance plotting and spoils the suspense early on, yet she creates a sorrowfully compelling world.

November 15, 2009
Across the smoky jazz club, Anne spots Serey, who has been glancing her way for most of the evening. Of course, Anne really shouldn't be in this Montreal nightspot, as she is only 16. Serey is a Cambodian student studying in Canada, having escaped his country during the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime. Anne's mother died when she was only two, and, while her father has done a good job of raising her, the love affair she strikes up with Serey tests their familial bonds. When the borders of Serey's country are reopened, the couple faces challenges, and Serey has to choose between his past and future. VERDICT The prose in this Canadian best seller by Echlin ("Elephant Winter") is clear and direct. Readers who like foreign settings and historical and political overtones will appreciate this love story, which spans years and countries and is set in the not-too-distant past amid the horrific reign of Pol Pot. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/15/09.]Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2009
Why did you never answer my letters? What letters? Who was censoring whom? Was it the dictatorship in Cambodia, where Serey lived? Or was it the protective father of Anne, 16, in Canada, who did not want her dating a dangerous stranger? The young people fall passionately in love when, in exile from the cruel Khmer Rouge, he plays in a rock band in Montreal. Then he goes back to Cambodia, and after years of waiting, she travels to find him in his country. Now, 30 year later, she speaks to him in her head as she remembers their passionate love, in Montreal and then in Cambodia, the baby she lost, and their parting when she returned to Canada. The dramatic blend of erotic bliss, physical horror, and enduring political issues will draw readers into her anguished conflict about love, guilt, forgiveness, and revenge. As she sees land-mine victims, without limbs or face, and wanders the killing fields where tourists now gather, she ponders the role of those who do nothing, including the indifferent. Is silence a crime?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)