Is it possible to be enthralled by the writing and yet left wanting by the story of a book? Of course it is - and that's what happened for me with Anatomy of a Disappearance. The story centers around Nuri, who is twelve years old when his mother dies. Within a year, his father has remarried a younger woman, Mona. Nuri has complicated feelings about that, at least partially related to his jealousy of his father because of his own crush on Mona. Everything changes, though, when Nuri's father is abducted while they are on vacation in Geneva. The circumstances surrounding the abduction - where he was taken from and why he was there, why he was taken, what happens now - are all part of what Nuri wants to know. However, Nuri is still just a kid attending boarding school in England and is limited in how he can follow up on those mysteries. Also limiting him is the tendency of everyone around him to avoid his questions, or answer with half-truths.
Reading this book is a sensual experience. Descriptions abound of small details: the quality of light, sounds, smells. Nuri is a keen observer of all those things, but he doesn't quite understand people, even by the end of the book, by which time he is twenty-four. I wanted more resolution on some threads but realize that the book's scope is the aftermath of the disappearance, and often in real life we don't get all the answers we want. Nuri's experience is defined by the fact that he's only left with the space his father should have filled and only able to examine the edges of his father's existence. Nevertheless, while I enjoyed the experience of reading the book, I can't say I felt satisfied by it.
Recommended for: people who enjoy beautiful writing, orphans, people who went to boarding school.
Quote: "So old and persistent did Mother's unhappiness seem that I had never stopped to ask its true cause. Nothing is more acceptable than that which we are born into."