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| We Disappear: A Novel (P.S.) | 
 enlarge | Author: Scott Heim
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $1.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 93537
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0061468975
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780061468971
ASIN: 0061468975
Publication Date: March 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Ships from PA, 15-day return for any reason. Fast Shipping, thank you for your order. Remainder mark
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 16 | | NEXT » |
 We Disappoint October 6, 2008
I recently read Mysterious Skin and it was one of the best novels I've read in a very long time. I could not wait to finish it and was sad once I did reach the end. So I decided to pick this one up next.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I really could not get into this novel. I thought it was very well written, but the story itself went nowhere. We have almost 300 pages of beautiful descriptions, and it all leads us to a place we already knew we were going to. There is no clear plot in this novel. I couldn't wait to finish it...so I could be finished with it!
The story is about a son and mother. The mother is dying from cancer. I could kind of relate to the hospital visits since my mom had to deal with all that last year (she's cancer free now, thankfully), but the story told in this novel is a bit out there. The most uninteresting thing was the story of his mother's disappearance. It seemed like a gimmick that was added to the original story just to pull the reader in, but it ultimately fails.
The good parts of this novel were the moments when the characters were not focusing on the missing children, or the mother's supposed disappearance as a child, but themselves as people dealing with the death of a loved one.
I think this novel could have been magnificent if the author had chose to write about everyday matters (Virginia Woolf does this well) without having to resort to the "missing children" plot that does nothing to further the main theme of the novel.
I'm looking forward to tracking the author's second novel, In Awe, because I do like his writing style and hopefully it will be more rewarding than this novel.
-Ater
 haunting July 22, 2008
*We Disappear* is a haunting novel about a mother and her grown son poring over missing children cases.
A young boy has gone missing, which Scott gets a call from his mother, Donna, asking him to come down to Kansas from Manhattan to solve this crime together. Addicted to meth, Scott relents and because his mother is sick with cancer.
However, he soon discovers, after his arrival, that his mother was once a victim of abduction as a child but was safely returned. For years, this "safe" abduction has bothered Donna. When she becomes too sick to carry on, Scott and her best friend, Dolores, continue to piece together this vague recollection of the abduction.
While she's sick and deemed delusional (of the alleged abduction), Scott doesn't realize that she has crafted a way to draw out her son from the world of meth.
I really enjoyed this haunting novel of a mother and son bonding over a hobby, an addiction and a past.
 A gem! July 20, 2008
"We Disappear" is a lovely and haunting novel. It is a compelling portrait of drug addiction and the relationship between a mother and her grown son set within a mystery centered on old family secrets. I found it gripping from the first to last page. Anyone who read "Mysterious Skin", or saw the movie based on that novel, may find it even more interesting, as in some ways it seemed a continuation of that story. Highly recommended!
Heim's best book yet June 9, 2008
The magic of this book is how its narrative style reflects its characters and plot. The rich detail of the prose perfectly reflects the overtly detailed stories that the characters fabricate to make the "disappeared" children more real to them. Even as they are losing grip on reality and themselves, this lush description and storytelling spins a fascinating yarn that weaves it all together. Drugs, death and delusion only add to the disorienting but beautiful surreality that propels the characters and the reader to keep going. And even as lives and lines blur so that no one knows what the truth is, the writing is crisp and the characters are distinct. I had hoped for a more complete resolution, but I am sure the characters did as well. Sometimes we have all we can do to pack our lives full of detail and meaning to keep from disappearing ourselves.
A Commentary for We Disappear June 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The words "brave, honest, uncompromising, intimate, sincere, and uncomfortable" all come to mind when I think of Heim's work, and those words of course apply here with his latest novel, We Disappear.
With We Disappear, Heim delves further into themes which lay at the heart of his previous work: loss of innocence and the search for identity. Whereas Brian Lackey of Mysterious Skin struggled to discover the true meaning behind repressed childhood memories of abuse, Donna of We Disappear fights a battle against cancer while she attempts to piece together disjointed memories of being kidnapped at a young age. Of course, both Mysterious Skin and We Disappear are multi-tiered, with many narrative branches that cross and overlap, forming many layers. Mysterious Skin wasn't solely about Brain's search for answers, and that is the case here as well with Donna. Answers aren't always clear, and they usually don't come in the concise and defined form that we expect them to.
As far as layers go, I think that We Disappear may indeed be Heim's most intricate and complicated work to date. Yes, Donna is searching for answers about her past- and over the course of the novel, she and her son, Scott, investigate many cases which concern missing children. A boy named Otis appears to be a mystery unto his own self. Once the reader starts to peel away these layers however, one soon comes to understand that Warren isn't really the person at the heart of Donna's search. It's someone much closer to her, someone who doesn't even realize that he himself has disappeared.
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