The Disappeared [Deckle Edge] [Paperback]

Kim Echlin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2009

After more than 30 years Anne Greves feels compelled to break her silence about her first lover, and a treacherous pursuit across Cambodia's killing fields.Once she was a motherless girl from taciturn immigrant stock. Defying fierce opposition, she falls in love with Serey, a gentle rebel and exiled musician. She's still only 16 when he leaves her in their Montreal flat to return to Cambodia And, after a decade without word, she abandons everything to search for him in the bars of Phnom Penh, a city traumatized by the Khmer Rouge slaughter. Against all odds the lovers are reunited, and in a political country where tranquil rice paddies harbour the bones of the massacred, Anne pieces together a new life with Serey. But there are wounds that love cannot heal, and some mysteries too dangerous to know. And when Serey disappears again, Anne discovers a story she cannot bear. Haunting, vivid, elegiac, The Disappeared is a tour de force; at once a battle cry and a piercing lamentation, for truth, for love.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

“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? --Hazel Rochman

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat (December 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802170668
• ISBN-13: 978-0802170668
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #615,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "My love for you has made me dead in life and you alive in death.", December 22, 2009

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Disappeared (Paperback)

At heart a love story, The Disappeared is as well a paean to the Cambodian genocide (1975-79), in which two million people died, through the Vietnamese occupation (1979-89) and the United Nations Transitional Authority leading to a democratic election in 1993. The sad and tragic history of the Cambodian people is the backdrop of this novel, viewed through the lens of the love of a teenaged girl for a Cambodian musician a few years older that she first meets in her native Montreal. Anne Greaves is headstrong and motherless, resenting her father's vague attempts to control her once she has fallen hopelessly in love with the long-haired Serey with his magical fingers and beautiful face. Serey plays the music of the Khmer, exotic, thrilling, when paired with the more modern tunes of the seventies.

When the borders of Cambodia reopen for a short time, Serey must return to locate his family and the lovers are parted. Distraught, Anne waits for word, but hears nothing. After six years, convinced she has seen him on a television newsreel of Cambodia, Anne steps out of her life in Montreal and takes a flight to Phnom Penh, where she uses her facility with the Khmer language to begin her search. Both tragic and beautiful, this book is filled with the language of love and loss, the meeting of true soul mates and the damage of genocide on an entire population of innocents. Following her destiny, Anne never falters, as sure in her love for Serey as the first night she hears him play in the Montreal nightclub. Echlin embraces Cambodia with an open heart, witness to the beauty, ritual, tradition and tragedy of a place caught in the juggernaut of history. Reunited, the lovers refuse to be parted, even in death.

In prose that is as both elegiac and profoundly sad, the author writes with the timelessness of those without the boundaries of convention. While Cambodia is ground down by years of brutality and deceit, the people rise above the din of death, chanting in one voice for the disappeared. A painful story indeed, but one that must be told. Luan Gaines/2009.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Still on the Fence, April 9, 2010

By 

A. Reader (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Disappeared (Paperback)

The Disappeared" is a different kind of book than what I would normally select for myself. Now that I am finished reading the story, I'm uncertain if I'm pleased or disappointed for stepping out of my comfort zone. Set during the Cambodian genocide in the 1970's, "The Disappeared" follows the lives of two lovers-- Anne, a Canadian, and Serey, a Cambodian student.

There are a few things that I found off-putting about the novel. First of all, the author writes in a series of first person recollections. I found the flow of thoughts to read in a disjointed manner. I think this writing mechanism was supposed to represent the fragmentation of memories (and it did), but it also seemed melodramatic. Second of all, some phrases and conversations occured partially in untranslated French, and because of this I felt like I might be missing details in the story. But really, what bothered me the most was the portrayal of Anne and Serey's "love." I found myself wondering if what they had together could truly be defined as love. There was never a sense of the characters drawing strength or courage from each other. Anne makes sacrifices for Serey, but does he ever truly reciprocate? It seemed like their "love" made them secretive, anguished, reckless and even a bit self destructive. That is certainly not the kind of love that I aspire to.

Regardless, "The Disappeared" is a lovely story of survival, loss, sorrow and friendship. It paints a stark and honest picture of Cambodia and the struggles of its people. The secondary characters are intriguing and in many cases, more interesting than the primary characters. I thought "The Disappeared" was a good book, and a worthwhile read. But I don't recommend you place it at the top of your book list.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous writing, September 12, 2010

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Figmentspot - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Disappeared (Paperback)

This book is not even so much about the story, which in itself is stunning, beautiful, harrowing; it's about language. It's about poetry. In this it reminds me much of Jeanette Winterson. Some moments:


I needed memory and hope and since I could find them nowhere else, I looked for them in the declension of verbs. Words swallowed me like a deep river.

I hear a voice cry out anguish. If this is a man? Human music turned into a note of music, the rhythm of a sentence. Men have invented a word for this. They call it sublime.

The Khmer Rouge used words to kill the people.

I think I began to read this way, studying the words in an open book, waiting for absence to be filled.


I was spellbound by "The Disappeared." Read it like a crazy person. Have ordered Echlin's other work. Breathtaking.