Watch Me Disappear [Import] [Paperback]

Jill Dawson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: ISIS Large Print Books; Large Print Ed edition (September 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753176971
• ISBN-13: 978-0753176979
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Jill Dawson is one of Britain's most talented contemporary writers. She began publishing at the age of 22 by winning first prize in a national short story competition. She went on to win an Eric Gregory Award for poetry, and published her first novel, Trick of the Light, in 1996. She is the author of six novels, editor of six anthologies of poetry and short stories, and has published one poetry pamphlet. Fred & Edie, her third novel, was shortlisted for both the Whitbread and Orange Prize, and was voted one of 50 essential novels by a living author by Guardian readers in the UK.
She has held many fellowships, including the British Council Fellowship in Amherst, and the Creative Writing Fellowship at University of East Anglia, Norwich, where she taught on the Writing MA.
In 2006 she received an honorary doctorate in recognition of her writing and her work with new writers.
Her latest novel, The Great Lover, was selected as a Summer Read for 2009 by TV's Richard and Judy Book Club.
Jill Dawson is currently director of Gold Dust, a mentoring scheme which pairs new writers with big-name established writers. www.gold-dust.org.uk
Her own website is here: www.jilldawson.co.uk

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Watch me disappear - essential reading, April 26, 2006

By 

Ben Osborn (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Watch Me Disappear (Hardcover)

Watch me disappear has everything you can ask for from a novel: it's compelling, engaging, moving and it draws you imperceptibly into another person's life while at the same time shedding light on your own.

Tina Humber lives a seemingly enviable existence: she's a successful English-born marine biologist who has made a life for herself in the United States with a loving partner and a happy, gifted daughter.

Yet when she accepts an invitation to go to her brother's marriage in the Fenland home of her youth, she is taking on more than a simple familial obligation. She is about to revisit a childhood world in which her school friend Mandy Baker goes missing, never to be seen again. This is a place where innocence is shattered and the dark secrets of family life seem to threaten even her own survival.

Watch me disappear is the fifth novel by the Whitbread and Orange Prize nominated author Jill Dawson whose previous works include Fred and Edie and Wild Boy. The characters, landscapes, dialogue and imagery are natural yet eerily haunting throughout; it's a work seems to move effortlessly from the page into the recesses of the reader's mind, yet clearly it can't have been an easy subject for a mother-of-two to enter into so profoundly.

Much like dreams themselves, the inherent elusiveness of memory is a constant theme throughout a novel which refuses to give simple, two-dimensional solutions to traumatic childhood events viewed through an adult's subjective perspective.

Despite the fragmentary and sometimes ghostlike nature of Tina's recollections, Watch me disappear gains much of its power from the sharp and often amusing descriptions of an English girl's life as she enters adolescence in the early 1970s and the agricultural world that surrounds her.

The whole thing is beautifully composed as Dawson shows complete mastery of period detail and in-depth knowledge of the seahorses which are the focal point of Tina's professional life and also an ongoing metaphor for her threatened existence.

Nevertheless, unlike some other well-researched novels, the scientific and historical insights provided in this book never distract from a gripping narrative drive and characterisations that carry you through to the last page and beyond.

Much like the experiences of the central character herself, the dreams and images of this novel are likely to stay in your conscious and subconscious mind for a long time after you've finished Watch me disappear.

Buy this book - you won't find a better read this year.

2.0 out of 5 stars Slow, May 19, 2008

By 

Barbara Lane "Audio Books only" (Sydney Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Watch Me Disappear (Paperback)

Found this really hard to get into. The author jumps all over the place with memories. She doesn't flower up scenes too much but I just can't get into it. The narrator is excellent she deserves 5 stars brilliant but a very below average story. sorry. won't even bother to try any more of this authors.