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A review by futurama1979
We Disappear by Scott Heim
4.0
Devastating book. Every character was both falling apart emotionally, physically, mentally, and also successfully keeping some manner of togetherness up for each other character. This dysfunctional oxymoronic thing powered the motion of the plot, the mystery, the search for the past. Heim pulled such a balancing act off with these characters and the rare moments they let things slip. Everyone is lying to everyone else, for the sake of everyone else. He also worked magic with the idea of unreliable narration; presenting at first to us a meth addict who fabricates and imagines everything, an obvious unreliable narrator, then building Scott's credibility through his detailed observations and his contrast with Donna and Dolores, then in the last few chapters turning it on us again. There's no turn off for the place they found Otis. Scott is hallucinating. How much of that was a hallucination before? And would it matter if it all was? Heim's pacing with everything, and, again, balancing of everything, was great.
Echoes of [b:Mysterious Skin|92365|Mysterious Skin|Scott Heim|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335326339l/92365._SX50_.jpg|89082] run all through this book. I'm going to have to reread it with this fresh in my mind, I think. There's the warden mother, the teenage cruiser, the questioning of childhood memory. The fact that We Disappear takes place one town over from Mysterious Skin. A lot of Heim's detail work is autobiographical, and it adds a closeness and realness to how he ornaments his writing. Where Mysterious Skin is a massive story, nebulously written, a thousand unsures, We Disappear is tight, direct. It is a closing of life where the former was a beginning. Mysterious Skin is the uncovering of a mystery, We Disappear is the gingerly, lovingly constructed game of uncovering a mystery. I found that the contrast and interplay between the two books sort of made a big impact on how I read this one.
As with other things I've read by him, Heim flirts with lots of clichés in tone and dialogue and commits to none of them. Sometimes, his writing seems overly simple. But thinking longer, it isn't. It's like most of the actual work and craft is happening behind the scenes of the physical story and writing. He's hiding the power of what he actually did with this book, and I'm sure you can read it and not find it, and you can also read it and put in a little bit of work and find it. I thought it was a really unique story that held a lot of heavy regret and pure love.
Echoes of [b:Mysterious Skin|92365|Mysterious Skin|Scott Heim|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335326339l/92365._SX50_.jpg|89082] run all through this book. I'm going to have to reread it with this fresh in my mind, I think. There's the warden mother, the teenage cruiser, the questioning of childhood memory. The fact that We Disappear takes place one town over from Mysterious Skin. A lot of Heim's detail work is autobiographical, and it adds a closeness and realness to how he ornaments his writing. Where Mysterious Skin is a massive story, nebulously written, a thousand unsures, We Disappear is tight, direct. It is a closing of life where the former was a beginning. Mysterious Skin is the uncovering of a mystery, We Disappear is the gingerly, lovingly constructed game of uncovering a mystery. I found that the contrast and interplay between the two books sort of made a big impact on how I read this one.
As with other things I've read by him, Heim flirts with lots of clichés in tone and dialogue and commits to none of them. Sometimes, his writing seems overly simple. But thinking longer, it isn't. It's like most of the actual work and craft is happening behind the scenes of the physical story and writing. He's hiding the power of what he actually did with this book, and I'm sure you can read it and not find it, and you can also read it and put in a little bit of work and find it. I thought it was a really unique story that held a lot of heavy regret and pure love.