A review by siria
Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar

2.0

Nuri is 12 when his mother dies, 14 when his father is kidnapped by political opponents and probably murdered; he spends the next few years shuffling between his English boarding school and the apartment of his beautiful young step-mother, Mona, on whom he is uncomfortably fixated. I liked the prose of Anatomy of a Disappearance—there were one or two of the more lyrical lines which didn't quite work for me, but otherwise Matar's style manages to be spare while also being descriptive and suggestive. That's quite a skill! However, I was disappointed by the overall story. I could have dealt with the lack of resolution of many of the main plotlines if there had been some sense of emotional growth or change on Nuri's part. Nuri is largely passive throughout, his character somewhat opaque even from a first person POV, and I was uncomfortable with many aspects of the construction of the female characters. There's enough promise in Matar's writing to make me willing to read more of his work, but I doubt that I will be returning to this particular book.