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We Disappear
The body of a teenage boy is discovered in a Kansas field. The murder haunts Donna—a recent widow battling cancer—calling forth troubling details from long-suppressed memories of her past. Hoping to discover more about "disappeared" people, she turns to her son, Scott, who is fighting demons of his own. Addicted to methamphetamines and sleeping pills, Scott is barely holding on—though the chance to help his mother in her strange and desperate search holds out a slim promise of some small salvation.
But what he finds is a boy named Otis handcuffed in a secret basement room, and the questions that arise seem too disturbing even to contemplate. With his mother's health rapidly deteriorating, he must surrender to his own obsession, and unravel Otis's unsettling connections to other missing teens . . . and, ultimately, to Scott himself.
293 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
55 people are currently reading
2201 people want to read
About the author
Scott Heim
14 books543 followersScott Heim was born in Hutchinson, Kansas in 1966. He grew up in a small farming community there, and later attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence, earning a B.A. in English and Art History in 1989 and an M.A. in English Literature in 1991. He attended the M.F.A. program in Writing at Columbia University, where he wrote his first novel, Mysterious Skin. HarperCollins published that book in 1995, and Scott followed it with another novel, In Awe, in 1997.
Scott has won fellowships to the London Arts Board as their International Writer-in-Residence, and to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab for his adaptation of Mysterious Skin. He is also the author of a book of poems, Saved From Drowning (1993).
After living eleven years in New York, he relocated to Boston in 2002. Mysterious Skin was adapted for the stage, premiering in San Francisco; it was subsequently adapted to film by director Gregg Araki and Antidote Films. Scott's third novel is We Disappear (HarperCollins), published in February 2008.
Scott has won fellowships to the London Arts Board as their International Writer-in-Residence, and to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab for his adaptation of Mysterious Skin. He is also the author of a book of poems, Saved From Drowning (1993).
After living eleven years in New York, he relocated to Boston in 2002. Mysterious Skin was adapted for the stage, premiering in San Francisco; it was subsequently adapted to film by director Gregg Araki and Antidote Films. Scott's third novel is We Disappear (HarperCollins), published in February 2008.
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November 12, 2019
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
If it weren’t for Lauren, I would have never even heard of this book let alone tracked down a hard copy from the library. And this is why places liked Goodreads or Instagram are awesome. Not for “likes” and followers and influencing and all the other real barfy shit that people only seem to talk about – but for friendship and book recs and potentially discovering a new favorite that would have not pinged your radar otherwise.
Per the above, I checked out We Disappear per Lauren’s recommendation alone. I did not read the blurb. You shouldn’t either because there’s a big fat fucking spoiler right in the middle of it that would have pissed me off if someone had blabbed it to me so it’s definitely not okay for the freaking book jacket to do it. The story here is about Scott, a meth addict, who returns to Kansas from New York after receiving a call from his mother who is battling cancer. Supposedly “disappeared” herself for a time as a child, Scott’s mother Donna has always had more than a bit of a fixation on missing persons cases. A dead boy being discovered in a field is the catalyst to the call to her son for help in amateur sleuthing their way to figuring out the “whodunit.”
And now let’s get giffy. This book had EV.ER.Y.THANG. on the Mitchell and Kelly sure-to-be-5-Star-meter going for it. To begin with . . . .
I think that’s been established by now.
Between Scott’s dope problem and his momma’s multiple memories of the same situation. Well . . . .
Cheers to that.
Then there’s that thing the blurb spoils . . . .
Seriously, blurbist. Why? I read a lot of freaking mysteries. It’s not super often that I have this sort of reaction . . . .
Bottom line?????
As Avril Lavigne would say – this was everything everything that I wanted. Dark, gritty, methy, dead people, nutters, the list goes on and on. All the Stars.
If it weren’t for Lauren, I would have never even heard of this book let alone tracked down a hard copy from the library. And this is why places liked Goodreads or Instagram are awesome. Not for “likes” and followers and influencing and all the other real barfy shit that people only seem to talk about – but for friendship and book recs and potentially discovering a new favorite that would have not pinged your radar otherwise.
Per the above, I checked out We Disappear per Lauren’s recommendation alone. I did not read the blurb. You shouldn’t either because there’s a big fat fucking spoiler right in the middle of it that would have pissed me off if someone had blabbed it to me so it’s definitely not okay for the freaking book jacket to do it. The story here is about Scott, a meth addict, who returns to Kansas from New York after receiving a call from his mother who is battling cancer. Supposedly “disappeared” herself for a time as a child, Scott’s mother Donna has always had more than a bit of a fixation on missing persons cases. A dead boy being discovered in a field is the catalyst to the call to her son for help in amateur sleuthing their way to figuring out the “whodunit.”
And now let’s get giffy. This book had EV.ER.Y.THANG. on the Mitchell and Kelly sure-to-be-5-Star-meter going for it. To begin with . . . .
I think that’s been established by now.
Between Scott’s dope problem and his momma’s multiple memories of the same situation. Well . . . .
Cheers to that.
Then there’s that thing the blurb spoils . . . .
Seriously, blurbist. Why? I read a lot of freaking mysteries. It’s not super often that I have this sort of reaction . . . .
Bottom line?????
As Avril Lavigne would say – this was everything everything that I wanted. Dark, gritty, methy, dead people, nutters, the list goes on and on. All the Stars.
May 27, 2012
Dear stranger,
You don't know me. I don't know where else to write about this. I used to read a lot of books. Some I didn't think that much about, or they were just okay and I would move on to the next one. If I was lucky I would have some place else to go in my head and I could take some long walk to one of the usual spots and I wouldn't notice that they were just the usual places. The words would stay all together and no one would ever know. I try to capture some of that in writing on goodreads and I don't know that I have ever succeeded. It's hard to wear your heart under your shoe. I have been thinking about sending my heartfelt thank you letter to Scott Heim for writing this book that came along at exactly the perfect time. I have never done that. How often does that happen? Never enough. I don't know yet if I'm going to send it. On the off chance that someone will possibly care about this, even though I don't know you, I will write about We Disappear here, even though I don't feel like I could write myself out of a minefield right now. I don't think I want to do the usual thing this time, that's all. Anything has to be better than doing nothing.
They don't know you. They wear those blank name labels that you can fill in with your own name. Hospital visitor. The permanent marker sharpies over decades of false alarms and living every day as if it was your last to make up for all of the shit you never had the guts to say. Impersonator I'm writing a book about taken kids identifier. Official and voyeuristic. Taking a prison job to stand outside the gates of what's the worst that could happen. I'm here for the day to walk around in your shoes. That could have been you or me. Hi, I'm your mother. I'm trying to be someone else's mother. Before it is too late this is what happened to me. Hints, changing stories and recurring facts that could be the axis to keep the moon in halves spinning around the earth. Sons, the missing link, checked in daughter. I don't know if this is going to mean anything to anyone else. My thesaurus rex gives out synonyms for everyone's names. Scott the son could be Otis the young man who is really Allen who lets Donna think he could be her connection to Warren who is the only other person who could understand what happened to them when they were children. Names of what could be the only chance to ever understand. What are those called? Family?
Have you ever felt like it would be too late to get the answers to the secrets of your own and your families past? Donna has always felt like she was taken as a little girl. I don't know you so I feel at a loss how to describe this other than to say it is so much better than it sounds. I feel some urgency to get this right. Scott the crystal meth addict who depends on this loss of reality. I hope the worst isn't going to happen fate accomplice. Donna is his mother and she's been almost dying of cancer for so long that no one believes her when it is really happening. No one has believed her stories of the stables, the cherry mash chocolate bars and coloring books, basements, hidden and kept, the little boy Warren and feeling as if the old couple who took them might have loved them more than she had ever known love. Scott and Donna would drive around and ask questions about missing kids. Names on posters and on milk cartons. Photographs and details and parts of the puzzle. They don't know them. Could they feel as if they could? Is there a link? Did Scott know his mother as he thought he did when she's been keeping these secrets for so long? And what can he be left with when she is gone? I don't know about you but one of the things I have had to face is misleading stories from different people about things that happened. I cannot trust my own memory for not being what someone else told me. Do you even know your own family? Scott Heim is so special to me for writing about this the way that he did.
I had never read a Scott Heim novel before this one although I had meant to for years. Mysterious Skin is one of my favorite films. I couldn't stop watching it that weekend I had rented it those years ago. It hurt to have to return it. I wanted to thank the man who had written this story, also about being taken and how to move on when the purest love you ever felt you had could be totally false and never really for you. How do you live? Heim got things right that I don't think I've ever known of anyone else coming close to understanding. Several of my goodreads friends have been talking about the film and the book lately. It reminded me that I still had to read Scott Heim. My goodreads friend Emilie gave We Disappear five stars and it is on her favorites shelf (I have to admit she's more than kind of my goodreads hero for this. Not just for this). I don't know if Mysterious Skin the book is as perfect as the film (my goodreads friend Andy says that it isn't quite). We Disappear is, in my eyes, perfect. I wouldn't change a thing. If Heim had to go on a search to do this I hope he feels it is worth it. Does it mean anything when you touch another person and they will never know they did it?
Would that I knew how to thank Scott Heim for writing this mother and son relationship that means so much to me. I believe in it. It almost feels possible to be able to live with the burden of not really knowing people and that the courage to peak into that bone yard is a lot braver than I'm willing to give credit for. It never felt like enough.
We Disappear was my first beach read of 2012. That's my favorite place to read. It's close enough to some other world. I didn't care that anyone else was there and could dance to my ipod and react naturally. It is too hard to forget about oneself. Do you ever feel that? I was feeling my usual pretty damned bad and feeling worse than usual that this passes for normal. I looked up at the sky and there was an enormous black cloud only over my head. I forgot you don't know me. I'm Mariel and this time it was not a metaphorical one only. I was like this when you met me!
What do you think? Should I send the letter?
Love,
Mariel
You don't know me. I don't know where else to write about this. I used to read a lot of books. Some I didn't think that much about, or they were just okay and I would move on to the next one. If I was lucky I would have some place else to go in my head and I could take some long walk to one of the usual spots and I wouldn't notice that they were just the usual places. The words would stay all together and no one would ever know. I try to capture some of that in writing on goodreads and I don't know that I have ever succeeded. It's hard to wear your heart under your shoe. I have been thinking about sending my heartfelt thank you letter to Scott Heim for writing this book that came along at exactly the perfect time. I have never done that. How often does that happen? Never enough. I don't know yet if I'm going to send it. On the off chance that someone will possibly care about this, even though I don't know you, I will write about We Disappear here, even though I don't feel like I could write myself out of a minefield right now. I don't think I want to do the usual thing this time, that's all. Anything has to be better than doing nothing.
They don't know you. They wear those blank name labels that you can fill in with your own name. Hospital visitor. The permanent marker sharpies over decades of false alarms and living every day as if it was your last to make up for all of the shit you never had the guts to say. Impersonator I'm writing a book about taken kids identifier. Official and voyeuristic. Taking a prison job to stand outside the gates of what's the worst that could happen. I'm here for the day to walk around in your shoes. That could have been you or me. Hi, I'm your mother. I'm trying to be someone else's mother. Before it is too late this is what happened to me. Hints, changing stories and recurring facts that could be the axis to keep the moon in halves spinning around the earth. Sons, the missing link, checked in daughter. I don't know if this is going to mean anything to anyone else. My thesaurus rex gives out synonyms for everyone's names. Scott the son could be Otis the young man who is really Allen who lets Donna think he could be her connection to Warren who is the only other person who could understand what happened to them when they were children. Names of what could be the only chance to ever understand. What are those called? Family?
Have you ever felt like it would be too late to get the answers to the secrets of your own and your families past? Donna has always felt like she was taken as a little girl. I don't know you so I feel at a loss how to describe this other than to say it is so much better than it sounds. I feel some urgency to get this right. Scott the crystal meth addict who depends on this loss of reality. I hope the worst isn't going to happen fate accomplice. Donna is his mother and she's been almost dying of cancer for so long that no one believes her when it is really happening. No one has believed her stories of the stables, the cherry mash chocolate bars and coloring books, basements, hidden and kept, the little boy Warren and feeling as if the old couple who took them might have loved them more than she had ever known love. Scott and Donna would drive around and ask questions about missing kids. Names on posters and on milk cartons. Photographs and details and parts of the puzzle. They don't know them. Could they feel as if they could? Is there a link? Did Scott know his mother as he thought he did when she's been keeping these secrets for so long? And what can he be left with when she is gone? I don't know about you but one of the things I have had to face is misleading stories from different people about things that happened. I cannot trust my own memory for not being what someone else told me. Do you even know your own family? Scott Heim is so special to me for writing about this the way that he did.
I had never read a Scott Heim novel before this one although I had meant to for years. Mysterious Skin is one of my favorite films. I couldn't stop watching it that weekend I had rented it those years ago. It hurt to have to return it. I wanted to thank the man who had written this story, also about being taken and how to move on when the purest love you ever felt you had could be totally false and never really for you. How do you live? Heim got things right that I don't think I've ever known of anyone else coming close to understanding. Several of my goodreads friends have been talking about the film and the book lately. It reminded me that I still had to read Scott Heim. My goodreads friend Emilie gave We Disappear five stars and it is on her favorites shelf (I have to admit she's more than kind of my goodreads hero for this. Not just for this). I don't know if Mysterious Skin the book is as perfect as the film (my goodreads friend Andy says that it isn't quite). We Disappear is, in my eyes, perfect. I wouldn't change a thing. If Heim had to go on a search to do this I hope he feels it is worth it. Does it mean anything when you touch another person and they will never know they did it?
Would that I knew how to thank Scott Heim for writing this mother and son relationship that means so much to me. I believe in it. It almost feels possible to be able to live with the burden of not really knowing people and that the courage to peak into that bone yard is a lot braver than I'm willing to give credit for. It never felt like enough.
We Disappear was my first beach read of 2012. That's my favorite place to read. It's close enough to some other world. I didn't care that anyone else was there and could dance to my ipod and react naturally. It is too hard to forget about oneself. Do you ever feel that? I was feeling my usual pretty damned bad and feeling worse than usual that this passes for normal. I looked up at the sky and there was an enormous black cloud only over my head. I forgot you don't know me. I'm Mariel and this time it was not a metaphorical one only. I was like this when you met me!
What do you think? Should I send the letter?
Love,
Mariel
March 10, 2008
In my view, Scott Heim's three novels form a triptych. MYSTERIOUS SKIN, IN AWE and WE DISAPPEAR are not connected, but they are variations on a theme. Each book involves a search, and the searchers are outcast souls whose kinship, through blood or experience, is ghostly. If you set the characters of Williams's GLASS MENAGERIE in search of the moment everything shattered in their house of glass, you'd get an idea of the stage on which Scott Heim sets his dramas. The two disparate souls of Truman Capote's A CHRISTMAS MEMORY could perch themselves comfortably here among these broken memories.
A lot of people try for the effect Scott Heim has achieved in each of these novels. A lot of people get close. I can watch an episode of SIX FEET UNDER and almost feel what I feel reading Scott Heim. I have a feeling a current Broadway play I haven't seen, Tracy Letts's AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, might have something of this effect. But what is generally atmosphere for others is almost holy when Scott Heim treats it. He describes a wall of magazine, postcard and greeting card images of angels without signaling the reader what he thinks of it or what he thinks we should think of it. Stephen King, who knows this world, would definitely have somebody shuddering at the sight of such a wall. But, by not saying whether this wall is tacky, or somehow beautiful, Heim conveys the idea that someone took the time to clip the images and put them on display. That this wall forms a counterpart to the many surfaces throughout the book on which the faces of the missing have been taped, stapled or tacked goes without saying, and it goes unsaid. Almost any other writer would draw arrows, bring up the background music or have someone comment on the similarity.
This highly visual book, dealing with doubt, is, nevertheless, naturalistic. It is attuned to mood. Scott Heim's writing reminds me of photo-realist painting. If done right, a painting which looks like a photograph can be startling in a way a photograph cannot. So, what is real is not necessarily the point of WE DISAPPEAR. Ambiguity isn't even the point. But if we allow ourselves to look, we can sometimes see ourselves.
A lot of people try for the effect Scott Heim has achieved in each of these novels. A lot of people get close. I can watch an episode of SIX FEET UNDER and almost feel what I feel reading Scott Heim. I have a feeling a current Broadway play I haven't seen, Tracy Letts's AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, might have something of this effect. But what is generally atmosphere for others is almost holy when Scott Heim treats it. He describes a wall of magazine, postcard and greeting card images of angels without signaling the reader what he thinks of it or what he thinks we should think of it. Stephen King, who knows this world, would definitely have somebody shuddering at the sight of such a wall. But, by not saying whether this wall is tacky, or somehow beautiful, Heim conveys the idea that someone took the time to clip the images and put them on display. That this wall forms a counterpart to the many surfaces throughout the book on which the faces of the missing have been taped, stapled or tacked goes without saying, and it goes unsaid. Almost any other writer would draw arrows, bring up the background music or have someone comment on the similarity.
This highly visual book, dealing with doubt, is, nevertheless, naturalistic. It is attuned to mood. Scott Heim's writing reminds me of photo-realist painting. If done right, a painting which looks like a photograph can be startling in a way a photograph cannot. So, what is real is not necessarily the point of WE DISAPPEAR. Ambiguity isn't even the point. But if we allow ourselves to look, we can sometimes see ourselves.
January 15, 2018
This books can have any rating, from 1 to 5 stars, and all of them would be probably right WRONG.
What to say about a book, that is so ingeniously written but that you CAN recommend to NOBODY?
How to review a book that belongs probably to one of the best written books I've read with a plot that I don't want to read EVER again, with the characters that I can only hope not to come across very often, with the worst ANTI-HERO as a narrator?
The story? You mean this fucking depressing disturbing hopeless stuff?
On your own risk.
This story is so fucking depressing, disturbing and deeply pessimistic!
A heavy stuff.
And nevertheless, in all its depressing aspects, we have a very poetic, photographically vivid and lyrical novella. Believe me or not.
I hated it and at the same time I admired it.
I couldn't put it down, it pulled me in, I wanted this fucking solution at the end of the story!
Did this kidnapping in the past really happen? Was it a reason for her obsession years later? Which of her versions of the story was true? Or was it only the cancer that went to her brain?
And then the ending...
Was the mystery so important here at all?
Or maybe it was only about a touching mother-son relationship?
About the last attempt of the mutter to save her son from his drug addiction?
Honestly. I don't know.
But doesn't matter how I'll rate it-
5 Stars for the brilliant eloquent GREAT writing.
I bow to this writing.
P.S. There are so many fabulous poignant reviews for this book, you should read them to decide if it's for you or not.
What to say about a book, that is so ingeniously written but that you CAN recommend to NOBODY?
How to review a book that belongs probably to one of the best written books I've read with a plot that I don't want to read EVER again, with the characters that I can only hope not to come across very often, with the worst ANTI-HERO as a narrator?
The story? You mean this fucking depressing disturbing hopeless stuff?
On your own risk.
After the phone call from his mother a heavily crystal meth addicted freelancer Scott comes from New York,where he works two days per week at Pen & Ink and 5 days per week is busy with getting high, to Partridge, his hometown in Kansas. To find out that the real reason for this call was not actually the new facts in her research in cases of disappearing children -a hobby that has become his mother's obsession and which she's devoted herself entirely to- but because her health condition has been deteriorating increasingly. His mother is dying of cancer and has hardly more than some weeks left to live. And she has some secrets to reveal...
This story is so fucking depressing, disturbing and deeply pessimistic!
A heavy stuff.
And nevertheless, in all its depressing aspects, we have a very poetic, photographically vivid and lyrical novella. Believe me or not.
I hated it and at the same time I admired it.
I couldn't put it down, it pulled me in, I wanted this fucking solution at the end of the story!
Did this kidnapping in the past really happen? Was it a reason for her obsession years later? Which of her versions of the story was true? Or was it only the cancer that went to her brain?
And then the ending...
Was the mystery so important here at all?
Or maybe it was only about a touching mother-son relationship?
About the last attempt of the mutter to save her son from his drug addiction?
Honestly. I don't know.
But doesn't matter how I'll rate it-
5 Stars for the brilliant eloquent GREAT writing.
I bow to this writing.
P.S. There are so many fabulous poignant reviews for this book, you should read them to decide if it's for you or not.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 19, 2010
I don't say this very often about writers but I'd like to read this man's poetry. The thing I love about Heim's writing is he takes the most painful or bizarre situations and creates the most vivid, lyrical, lasting imagery out of them. He writes about the leaps and bounds the mind makes in order to explain or justify some kind of trauma or painful event to itself. He did this brilliantly in MYSTERIOUS SKIN, not as effectively (in my opinion) in IN AWE, but he reaches full frutition here in WE DISAPPER. He explores some themes familiar to him but from a different angle. Clearly he's writing about something much more personal. At first, I had trouble accepting the narrator's credibility and some of the events of the story seemed kind of a reach but as the whole thing subtly changed focus and drew towards its conclusion it all made total sense to me and i can't imagine it being any other way. Days later I'm still trying to pick apart the real from the imaginary in it and wondering how the characters are getting along. I may read this again to see what I missed. This (to me) is the mark of something great.
December 11, 2015
set in kansas, son a meth head with sleeping pill addiction, mom is going of her rocker, young boys are turning up dead on the prairie, and then...we find otis, chained up in a basement
chilling, written by poet novelist.
meth is never good
chilling, written by poet novelist.
meth is never good
November 21, 2019
A good one.
July 22, 2008
As posted in [http://www.amazon.com]:
*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.
*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.
June 7, 2009
I just love Scott Heim's style of writing: the depth and verisimilitude of his characters, and how his pacing and momentum kept me so engulfed in this book that I read it pretty much in one sitting. You can feel how personal this story is to Scott, not just by naming the characters after himself and his mother, but also how he writes about their story with such intimacy and delicacy.
This almost read like a mystery novel to me, which I really enjoyed. It was like I was watching an episode of Forensic Files or some show that profiles kidnappings, but focusing more on the family's psychology after the event. Heim's focus on suppressed memories always seems to intrigue me as well. The main character being gay was very subtly brought up in the book, and although I originally thought it would play a larger role I wasn't disappointed.
Another book I'd recommend by Scott Heim. Now I'm just waiting for his next book, which hopefully won't be as long of a wait as it was from Mysterious Skin to We Disappear (but I understand works of art take time!)
This almost read like a mystery novel to me, which I really enjoyed. It was like I was watching an episode of Forensic Files or some show that profiles kidnappings, but focusing more on the family's psychology after the event. Heim's focus on suppressed memories always seems to intrigue me as well. The main character being gay was very subtly brought up in the book, and although I originally thought it would play a larger role I wasn't disappointed.
Another book I'd recommend by Scott Heim. Now I'm just waiting for his next book, which hopefully won't be as long of a wait as it was from Mysterious Skin to We Disappear (but I understand works of art take time!)
November 13, 2015
Whoa.
That's the one word review I have of Scott Heim's We Disappear.
Here's the extended version: Holy futha muckin whoa! The story follows a meth head returning home to Kansas from his freelance writing job in NY to "help" his cancer-stricken alcoholic semi-sane mom "research a book" about the families of children who disappear, with whom she has become obsessed. I know! It's unique. It's fascinating. It's a book I read in three days because I could not put it down. Yes, that's right, I became addicted to this novel.
Heim's characters evoke sympathy. The plot evokes curiosity and some shame at being so curious about the misfortune of others, even though those others are fictional. That's the sign of good writing. That's why you should read this book.
That's the one word review I have of Scott Heim's We Disappear.
Here's the extended version: Holy futha muckin whoa! The story follows a meth head returning home to Kansas from his freelance writing job in NY to "help" his cancer-stricken alcoholic semi-sane mom "research a book" about the families of children who disappear, with whom she has become obsessed. I know! It's unique. It's fascinating. It's a book I read in three days because I could not put it down. Yes, that's right, I became addicted to this novel.
Heim's characters evoke sympathy. The plot evokes curiosity and some shame at being so curious about the misfortune of others, even though those others are fictional. That's the sign of good writing. That's why you should read this book.
May 26, 2010
Modus Exodus
It is rewarding to find book titles that can be taken on so many levels. Such is the case for Scot Heim's fine novel WE DISAPPEAR. Yes, the running story is the following of mother and son on the trail of missing children (and that story is sufficient reason to become engrossed in this compelling novel). But the characters Heim creates are all 'disappearing' - from the descending vitality of Donna the mother whose battle with lymphoma is a losing one and she is disappearing into death, to the mind state of her son Scott whose life centers on smoking and snorting crystal meth and balancing his slow disappearance from reality with heavy doses of Ambein sleeping pills, to the all but disappeared presence of Alice (Scott's sister who can no longer cope with Scott's drugs or her mother's prolonged futile chemotherapy, to the disappearances of Donna's friend Dolores into the bourbon glass, to the disappearance of Gavin - the drug source for the addicted Scott. Sounds too far fetched to be true? No, not in the skilled hands of Heim who knows well how to build characters so that we visualize them with ease and thus take note of their varying forms of disappearing.
But the main story line is Donna's preoccupation with disappearing children, a topic she has made her life's work and the trail for which she has called her son Scott from his New York stupor to help her complete. Together they make an odd but ultimately endearing couple as they follow clues for reported missing (read 'kidnapped') children whose bodies are recovered after some ungainly pasts. In the end it is a tale that Donna shares with Scott, his sister Alice, and her friend Dolores - a tale that unveils secrets of Donna's childhood that are shocking and puzzling. In the midst of this search there appears a young teenager Otis who winds up kidnapped in Donna's basement and with whom Scott discovers the secrets Donna has shrouded.
This may sound like a cast of misfits about whom we could care little, but in Scott Heim's eloquent prose we grow into the minds of these folks from Kansas and become inextricably involved in the conundrums they each present. Heim understands addiction, suffering, the dying process, and the need for returning to the womb that mother's, no matter how loony, represent. This is a story that could be excerpted purely for the descriptions of the lonely plains of Kansas and the atmospheres of the seasons. It simply is a fine read, on every level.
Grady Harp
It is rewarding to find book titles that can be taken on so many levels. Such is the case for Scot Heim's fine novel WE DISAPPEAR. Yes, the running story is the following of mother and son on the trail of missing children (and that story is sufficient reason to become engrossed in this compelling novel). But the characters Heim creates are all 'disappearing' - from the descending vitality of Donna the mother whose battle with lymphoma is a losing one and she is disappearing into death, to the mind state of her son Scott whose life centers on smoking and snorting crystal meth and balancing his slow disappearance from reality with heavy doses of Ambein sleeping pills, to the all but disappeared presence of Alice (Scott's sister who can no longer cope with Scott's drugs or her mother's prolonged futile chemotherapy, to the disappearances of Donna's friend Dolores into the bourbon glass, to the disappearance of Gavin - the drug source for the addicted Scott. Sounds too far fetched to be true? No, not in the skilled hands of Heim who knows well how to build characters so that we visualize them with ease and thus take note of their varying forms of disappearing.
But the main story line is Donna's preoccupation with disappearing children, a topic she has made her life's work and the trail for which she has called her son Scott from his New York stupor to help her complete. Together they make an odd but ultimately endearing couple as they follow clues for reported missing (read 'kidnapped') children whose bodies are recovered after some ungainly pasts. In the end it is a tale that Donna shares with Scott, his sister Alice, and her friend Dolores - a tale that unveils secrets of Donna's childhood that are shocking and puzzling. In the midst of this search there appears a young teenager Otis who winds up kidnapped in Donna's basement and with whom Scott discovers the secrets Donna has shrouded.
This may sound like a cast of misfits about whom we could care little, but in Scott Heim's eloquent prose we grow into the minds of these folks from Kansas and become inextricably involved in the conundrums they each present. Heim understands addiction, suffering, the dying process, and the need for returning to the womb that mother's, no matter how loony, represent. This is a story that could be excerpted purely for the descriptions of the lonely plains of Kansas and the atmospheres of the seasons. It simply is a fine read, on every level.
Grady Harp
September 29, 2012
Just turned the last page of WE DISAPPEAR, and I feel the same way I've felt stumbling out of a movie theater: tight-throated, raw, reluctant to leave the dark place where I just witnessed life presented in clear, stunning images. Scott Heim can write. I can open almost any page of this novel and find an example that reveals the poet in him -- he has published poetry as well as fiction previously. Not many writers can pull this off, I think, but Heim's images are so apt and so tied to his story, he manages to serve up gorgeous language without being too distracting or showy.
While written with pretty words, WE DISAPPEAR is not a pretty book. It's a gritty story about a young man named Scott, a meth addict, living in New York who returns home to Kansas to help his ill mother in her last weeks. When his mother summons him, she isn't asking for caretaking, but for his assistance in figuring out whether and why she was kidnapped as a child. Solving this mystery involves the stories of many other children who have disappeared and many plot twists, but the heart of the book is a love story between son and mother--a love that is depicted credibly in all its complications. (One notable aspect of the book is that it doesn't involve romantic love in any significant way. If Heim had been a more conventional writer, Scott's mother's best friend, who becomes his ally, would have been a suitable love interest, a male, but it's always clear that any romantic spark with Delores is out of the question.)
I was drawn to this book initally because I have a longstanding interest in people who disappear, and the many forms that "disappearing" can take. This book was satisfying from that perspective, too. In fact, I was almost startled by some of the parallels between this book and my novel, Sleeping with Patty Hearst -- though the plot lines are completely different.
This is incomplete - plan to write more.
While written with pretty words, WE DISAPPEAR is not a pretty book. It's a gritty story about a young man named Scott, a meth addict, living in New York who returns home to Kansas to help his ill mother in her last weeks. When his mother summons him, she isn't asking for caretaking, but for his assistance in figuring out whether and why she was kidnapped as a child. Solving this mystery involves the stories of many other children who have disappeared and many plot twists, but the heart of the book is a love story between son and mother--a love that is depicted credibly in all its complications. (One notable aspect of the book is that it doesn't involve romantic love in any significant way. If Heim had been a more conventional writer, Scott's mother's best friend, who becomes his ally, would have been a suitable love interest, a male, but it's always clear that any romantic spark with Delores is out of the question.)
I was drawn to this book initally because I have a longstanding interest in people who disappear, and the many forms that "disappearing" can take. This book was satisfying from that perspective, too. In fact, I was almost startled by some of the parallels between this book and my novel, Sleeping with Patty Hearst -- though the plot lines are completely different.
This is incomplete - plan to write more.
October 3, 2019
Well yes, not entirely surely about my thoughts on We Disappear except a slight feeling of discomfort and need of a shower. There's something in how Heim writes his first person prose that draws the reader in and makes them somehow complicit in the character's doings and feeling of being unclean.
It's a Scott Heim novel so of course it's unsettling, dark, disturbing does frankly nothing for the rural Kansas tourist board (and frankly puts you right off crystal meth) but for all that is involving prose that you have to finish, though not for nice clean easy answers.
It's a Scott Heim novel so of course it's unsettling, dark, disturbing does frankly nothing for the rural Kansas tourist board (and frankly puts you right off crystal meth) but for all that is involving prose that you have to finish, though not for nice clean easy answers.
May 21, 2019
Here's a thing I don't understand - why do publishers sometimes write a blurb that makes no sense in relation to the actual contents of the book?
I perhaps would have enjoyed this more, if I went into it with the right frame of mind. The synopsis reads like a thrilling psychological book about missing children and a potential connection with our main character Scott's family. (also, there's a plot point listed in the synopsis -'a boy handcuffed in a secret basement room' - that doesn't happen until literally half way through the book...this is another thing I don't understand!)
What we actually get here is a family drama type book, with less drama and more 'guy goes home to look after his dying mother'. The missing children do of course have a part in the story, but it's more a mundane obsession than a mysterious unravelling of secrets.
I was expecting this to be slightly creepy, slightly mysterious, definitely slightly disturbing - given Heim's first novel Mysterious Skin. But to be honest it was more blah than anything.
If you want to read a book about a woman slowly deteriorating from cancer, while her drug addicted son and alcoholic best friend try to 'uncover a mystery' (that may or may not have even happened - and to be honest, doesn't get a good pay off at the end) in between hospital visits and meth withdrawal, then you'll probably love this book.
For me it was just ok, I didn't feel like I struggled through it at all, it just didn't give me what I wanted
I perhaps would have enjoyed this more, if I went into it with the right frame of mind. The synopsis reads like a thrilling psychological book about missing children and a potential connection with our main character Scott's family. (also, there's a plot point listed in the synopsis -'a boy handcuffed in a secret basement room' - that doesn't happen until literally half way through the book...this is another thing I don't understand!)
What we actually get here is a family drama type book, with less drama and more 'guy goes home to look after his dying mother'. The missing children do of course have a part in the story, but it's more a mundane obsession than a mysterious unravelling of secrets.
I was expecting this to be slightly creepy, slightly mysterious, definitely slightly disturbing - given Heim's first novel Mysterious Skin. But to be honest it was more blah than anything.
If you want to read a book about a woman slowly deteriorating from cancer, while her drug addicted son and alcoholic best friend try to 'uncover a mystery' (that may or may not have even happened - and to be honest, doesn't get a good pay off at the end) in between hospital visits and meth withdrawal, then you'll probably love this book.
For me it was just ok, I didn't feel like I struggled through it at all, it just didn't give me what I wanted
April 22, 2008
So much dies with people when their bodies cease to live. Memories. Secrets. Desires. A monumental moment in one's life can over time whittle away, as witnesses move away, forget, or die, as one grows old and replaces details as the years go by. The memories of countless lives disappear without a trace this way. Last week I got an e-mail from my mother that a cousin in Ecuador, only 31 years old, had just passed away suddenly from cancer. It's been 10 years since I saw this cousin, and in that time, she grew up, confronted life-changing obstacles and struggles, accomplished much. I've only heard of these stories since her death, second or third-hand. Now she's gone and I'll never get to know her fully. I finished reading "We Disappear" this week, with this sad news fresh in my heart. And in the way that good literature can catalyze emotions, with real life as its substrate, I felt this novel's ending push out of me that realization that I don't have time to waste. Life is short. And there are many memories, my own, and those of others, to find, hold, cherish, and understand.
September 20, 2012
Scott Heim ha impiegato ben dieci anni a scrivere questo romanzo. Dieci anni possono essere una vita intera: e questa è la sensazione che si impone leggendo questo romanzo.
Meno poetico, molto meno lirico di Mysterious Skin, più pensato, ponderato, e decisamente più assurdo. Nel grigio di questo romanzo, già annunciato dalla copertina, spesso ho pensato al precedente romanzo di Heim, un ricordo ancora vivido, intenso, accecante. Davvero non credevo potesse reggere il confronto. Eppure, questo romanzo pesante, che trasuda tutti i suoi dieci anni di gestazione, è un romanzo da cinque stelle. Heim è un grandissimo scrittore, ancora una volta, perché ha fatto a pezzi l'America, ha fatto a pezzi il rapporto madre -figlio nel tentativo disperato di salvare tutti.
Colpa, redenzione, salvezza: le parole-chiave del romanzo. Il protagonista Scott è un uomo adulto, tossicodipendente, dall'esistenza grigia; quando decide di tornare a prestare soccorso alla madre malata, tenterà di salvare se stesso salvando la madre. La madre, dunque: la strana Donna, dal passato nebuloso e un'ossessione feroce per le storie d'infanzia violata, storie di bambini scomparsi, rapiti, assassinati. Un'ossessione spasmodica per le sparizioni: perché è proprio una scomparsa ad aver lasciato il segno nella sua vita, la scomparsa di una settimana di vita durante l'infanzia. Qui si rivede lo stesso autore di Mysterious Skin: accecante è l'analogia con Brian, il cui trauma per abuso sessuale ha ingoiato una settimana di vita, fino a distorcere completamente la realtà. Allo stesso modo, nel tentativo di riavvicinarsi e riallontanarsi da quell'evento oscuro Donna distorce la realtà, costruendo storie sempre più fantasiose che regala a chi le sta intorno, per proteggere se stessa, forse, sicuramente per salvare gli altri, a cominciare dal figlio. Circondati da personaggi pure più assurdi, a cominciare da Otis/Allen, il giovane che si consegna volontariamente alla pantomima creata da Donna, madre e figlio si fanno largo tra le contraddizioni di una realtà sempre più evanescente, tra le allucinazioni di Scott e le menzogne di Donna, fino a scorgere un briciolo di salvifica verità.
Impostato come un noir, ciò che Heim veramente compie è un'operazione simbolica, formale, che accompagna una fitta introspezione sempre più evidente: la trama noir si sfalda progressivamente, si dissolve nel gioco di finzione portato avanti dai personaggi. Ciò che resta, ed è il vero nucleo del romanzo, è una lucida psicopatologia del rapporto madre-figlio, sullo sfondo di tv lontane, posate che tintinnano, milkshake alla fragola.
Meno poetico, molto meno lirico di Mysterious Skin, più pensato, ponderato, e decisamente più assurdo. Nel grigio di questo romanzo, già annunciato dalla copertina, spesso ho pensato al precedente romanzo di Heim, un ricordo ancora vivido, intenso, accecante. Davvero non credevo potesse reggere il confronto. Eppure, questo romanzo pesante, che trasuda tutti i suoi dieci anni di gestazione, è un romanzo da cinque stelle. Heim è un grandissimo scrittore, ancora una volta, perché ha fatto a pezzi l'America, ha fatto a pezzi il rapporto madre -figlio nel tentativo disperato di salvare tutti.
Colpa, redenzione, salvezza: le parole-chiave del romanzo. Il protagonista Scott è un uomo adulto, tossicodipendente, dall'esistenza grigia; quando decide di tornare a prestare soccorso alla madre malata, tenterà di salvare se stesso salvando la madre. La madre, dunque: la strana Donna, dal passato nebuloso e un'ossessione feroce per le storie d'infanzia violata, storie di bambini scomparsi, rapiti, assassinati. Un'ossessione spasmodica per le sparizioni: perché è proprio una scomparsa ad aver lasciato il segno nella sua vita, la scomparsa di una settimana di vita durante l'infanzia. Qui si rivede lo stesso autore di Mysterious Skin: accecante è l'analogia con Brian, il cui trauma per abuso sessuale ha ingoiato una settimana di vita, fino a distorcere completamente la realtà. Allo stesso modo, nel tentativo di riavvicinarsi e riallontanarsi da quell'evento oscuro Donna distorce la realtà, costruendo storie sempre più fantasiose che regala a chi le sta intorno, per proteggere se stessa, forse, sicuramente per salvare gli altri, a cominciare dal figlio. Circondati da personaggi pure più assurdi, a cominciare da Otis/Allen, il giovane che si consegna volontariamente alla pantomima creata da Donna, madre e figlio si fanno largo tra le contraddizioni di una realtà sempre più evanescente, tra le allucinazioni di Scott e le menzogne di Donna, fino a scorgere un briciolo di salvifica verità.
Impostato come un noir, ciò che Heim veramente compie è un'operazione simbolica, formale, che accompagna una fitta introspezione sempre più evidente: la trama noir si sfalda progressivamente, si dissolve nel gioco di finzione portato avanti dai personaggi. Ciò che resta, ed è il vero nucleo del romanzo, è una lucida psicopatologia del rapporto madre-figlio, sullo sfondo di tv lontane, posate che tintinnano, milkshake alla fragola.
May 9, 2008
I read "Mysterious Skin" possibly when I was still in high school and really liked it. It was a fresh and different take on gay men's fiction (amidst a lot of boring coming out stories) and it was hard hitting and emotional and interesting.
"We Disappear" is Heim's first book in a while, and it seems to have emerged from the success of the film version of "Mysterious Skin."
It handles a mother-son relationship in a refreshing way for gay fiction (it's not really about sexual orientation reconciliation or anything so afterschool special-y). And I like Heim's focus on Kansas. But beyond that, the plot and theme just did not hang together very well for me.
It simply was not that engaging or interesting, and one character's struggle with crystal meth in particular seemed like an add-on (like the gay topic du jour) rather than something of thematic importance (despite the fact that it was a major plot point!) or worthy of emotional engagement.
And there just felt like a lot of false starts in terms of ideas that just did not get followed through with. To the extent that the ending chapters dealing with death (like very specifically the last day) and loss and grief after were sort of diminished by plot let-downs before hand.
That said, it's great when gay people write about more than the same 2 or 3 ideas (coming out or AIDs or sex) and I appreciate that (even if the book is bad books) and I think Heim does a great job in this book of pushing gay fiction's boundaries.
But I was overall kind of disappointed by this book.
"We Disappear" is Heim's first book in a while, and it seems to have emerged from the success of the film version of "Mysterious Skin."
It handles a mother-son relationship in a refreshing way for gay fiction (it's not really about sexual orientation reconciliation or anything so afterschool special-y). And I like Heim's focus on Kansas. But beyond that, the plot and theme just did not hang together very well for me.
It simply was not that engaging or interesting, and one character's struggle with crystal meth in particular seemed like an add-on (like the gay topic du jour) rather than something of thematic importance (despite the fact that it was a major plot point!) or worthy of emotional engagement.
And there just felt like a lot of false starts in terms of ideas that just did not get followed through with. To the extent that the ending chapters dealing with death (like very specifically the last day) and loss and grief after were sort of diminished by plot let-downs before hand.
That said, it's great when gay people write about more than the same 2 or 3 ideas (coming out or AIDs or sex) and I appreciate that (even if the book is bad books) and I think Heim does a great job in this book of pushing gay fiction's boundaries.
But I was overall kind of disappointed by this book.
September 10, 2011
Viewed through the eyes of a meth addict, returned home to care for his mother in her final days, the Kansas prairie in winter is dark and melancholy. So are the implications of the story she spins out of her mysterious abduction as a young girl and, a week later, her equally baffling release. She is obsessed with the missing, the disappeared, and with finding Warren, the young boy with whom she was held.
Scott Heim's first novel, 1995's Mysterious Skin, was an auspicious debut (adapted to the screen in 2004 by Heim and independent film-maker Gregg Araki and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt; the production garnered a fistful of indie film awards). That story, too, hinges on a Kansas abduction: "The summer I was 8 years old, five hours disappeared from my life. Five hours. Lost. Gone without a trace."
The spare, poetic prose of Mysterious Skin was remarkable. The language of We Disappear is simply breathtaking. Heim has so focused his writing -- his attention to the smells and colors and textures that counterpoint the Kansas bleakness -- and set a tempo so inexorable that I defy anyone to put this book down unfinished. It echoes of the best of Cormac McCarthy, with a touch of Don DeLillo, while remaining resolutely original.
I hope it is made into a film by Gus van Sant.
Scott Heim's first novel, 1995's Mysterious Skin, was an auspicious debut (adapted to the screen in 2004 by Heim and independent film-maker Gregg Araki and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt; the production garnered a fistful of indie film awards). That story, too, hinges on a Kansas abduction: "The summer I was 8 years old, five hours disappeared from my life. Five hours. Lost. Gone without a trace."
The spare, poetic prose of Mysterious Skin was remarkable. The language of We Disappear is simply breathtaking. Heim has so focused his writing -- his attention to the smells and colors and textures that counterpoint the Kansas bleakness -- and set a tempo so inexorable that I defy anyone to put this book down unfinished. It echoes of the best of Cormac McCarthy, with a touch of Don DeLillo, while remaining resolutely original.
I hope it is made into a film by Gus van Sant.
February 20, 2020
Scott Heim is a talented writer, so this book, his third novel, but a bit of a disappointment. I would give him 4 or 5 stars for the strength of his writing, but only 1 or 2 for the story. He combines a very strong realistic voice with elements that are unbelievable. The main story, a drug addicted gay writer (named Scott!) goes home to Kansas to see his cancer stricken mother, is one that would typically be riddled with quiet revelations and emotional breakthroughs. Heim, however, seasons the narrative with absurdist (possibly metaphoric) elements, such as a teenager taken prisoner by his mother and kept in the basement in handcuffs. It took me a long time to start seeing everyone as archetypes in the Jungian manner; otherwise the novel completely breaks down. In other words, Scott is the teenager in the basement kept prisoner by his mother. The whole here is, unfortunately, smaller than the sum of its parts.
January 29, 2008
scott has written a truly haunting, moving, often funny, and surprising book. i think it might be his best, even as much as i love MYSTERIOUS SKIN. the characters will stay with me for a long, long while.
November 19, 2021
*We Disappear*, the third novel by Scott Heim---long-awaited at the time of its release (2008)---is that little bit of proof I needed to conclude that, yes, I have indeed found a kindred spirit writer. After discovering and being forever changed by *Mysterious Skin* earlier this year, I vowed to read everything Heim has written.
*We Disappear* is a sad and unsettling novel about a relationship between a mother and a son, but as Heim does so well, it also flirts with the language of horror and body panic. Like Alexander Chee on *Edinburgh* or Hanya Yanagihara in *A Little Life*, Heim can write about disconnection and desire and distress in a single passage, and never lose its sensitivity and tenderness.
The novel begins with a woman named Donna who believes she was kidnapped as a child but seems to be telling her loved ones different versions of the story. Privately suffering from cancer, she calls her son, Scott, home to help her investigate her newly crystallizing memories from the past. As the mystery unfolds, it is Scott who must come to terms with his own demons and the meaning of his mother in his healing.
I love Heim's writing. It makes me feel so much, and I can still remember certain sentences I read days ago for both their style and their emotional resonance.
Discovering writers to add to my all-time favourites list is still one of the greatest joys of my life.
*We Disappear* is a sad and unsettling novel about a relationship between a mother and a son, but as Heim does so well, it also flirts with the language of horror and body panic. Like Alexander Chee on *Edinburgh* or Hanya Yanagihara in *A Little Life*, Heim can write about disconnection and desire and distress in a single passage, and never lose its sensitivity and tenderness.
The novel begins with a woman named Donna who believes she was kidnapped as a child but seems to be telling her loved ones different versions of the story. Privately suffering from cancer, she calls her son, Scott, home to help her investigate her newly crystallizing memories from the past. As the mystery unfolds, it is Scott who must come to terms with his own demons and the meaning of his mother in his healing.
I love Heim's writing. It makes me feel so much, and I can still remember certain sentences I read days ago for both their style and their emotional resonance.
Discovering writers to add to my all-time favourites list is still one of the greatest joys of my life.
July 13, 2022
Generational trauma.
There is a lot to unravel here. Either I did not unravel enough or it doesn’t all work. I have to think on it.
A surprisingly quick read for what is going on within these pages.
There is a lot to unravel here. Either I did not unravel enough or it doesn’t all work. I have to think on it.
A surprisingly quick read for what is going on within these pages.
February 2, 2023
“Writing We Disappear was a bit like therapy: both a purging of demons and creative reconstruction of the past. My only regret is that I took so long to complete the novel. It’s an ode to my mother, ultimately, and I wish she could see the finished product. If she were here, I’d tell her I’m sorry.”
- Scott Heim
The third novel from Mysterious Skin author Scott Heim, published in 2008 (and at this point still his latest novel). Mysterious Skin is one of my favorite books and movies of all time, and I’ve gotten to know Heim through Twitter over the last couple years. He told me, interestingly, that We Disappear is the one thing he’s completely proud of, despite Mysterious Skin being his most successful and well-received book. Mysterious Skin was actually his master’s thesis at Columbia University. We Disappear was a book he put aside for a long time and experienced writer’s block with, but with the film version of Mysterious Skin coming out and the death of his mother, he was inspired to return to it.
I’ve now read all three of Heim’s novels, and they have some similarities. They all take place in Kansas, where Heim grew up. They typically bring together a few distinct and differing characters, and they all involve a mystery of some kind. I still found some subtle differences in genre, though; I consider Mysterious Skin to be ultimately a drama and character study about trauma, whereas In Awe has some horror elements, and We Disappear is more of a straight-up mystery. This was quite a page-turner, as weird events kept occurring and I didn’t quite know where it was going. I think the book might lean a little too heavily into info dumping at times, but it’s still a really engaging read with a fantastically written, sad and personal ending. It maybe wasn’t completely satisfying, as Heim still leaves a lot unanswered and doesn’t close every thread that he opened, but the ending is certainly a highlight, even reminiscent of the all-time great ending in Mysterious Skin.
I hope Heim writes another novel someday. I also hope that this or In Awe gets a movie adaptation. His latter two novels aren’t as utterly soul-destroying as Mysterious Skin, but they’re still pretty darn good and beautifully written. Heim has such a natural, smooth way with words that makes me jealous as a writer.
The afterword section of this book was pretty fascinating too. Heim talks briefly about how Mysterious Skin became a movie, and how he toured his Kansas hometown with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He said that Gordon-Levitt even got to meet Heim’s mother before she died. Pretty cool stuff. He also talks candidly about being asked in interviews if his books are based on his own experiences.
I also found that my edition of the book was actually signed by Heim in pen on the inside cover. Had no idea until I opened the book. I sent a picture to him and he seemed surprised.
Next up, I’m planning on rereading Mysterious Skin before diving into all the other first-time reads I want to get to.
- Scott Heim
The third novel from Mysterious Skin author Scott Heim, published in 2008 (and at this point still his latest novel). Mysterious Skin is one of my favorite books and movies of all time, and I’ve gotten to know Heim through Twitter over the last couple years. He told me, interestingly, that We Disappear is the one thing he’s completely proud of, despite Mysterious Skin being his most successful and well-received book. Mysterious Skin was actually his master’s thesis at Columbia University. We Disappear was a book he put aside for a long time and experienced writer’s block with, but with the film version of Mysterious Skin coming out and the death of his mother, he was inspired to return to it.
I’ve now read all three of Heim’s novels, and they have some similarities. They all take place in Kansas, where Heim grew up. They typically bring together a few distinct and differing characters, and they all involve a mystery of some kind. I still found some subtle differences in genre, though; I consider Mysterious Skin to be ultimately a drama and character study about trauma, whereas In Awe has some horror elements, and We Disappear is more of a straight-up mystery. This was quite a page-turner, as weird events kept occurring and I didn’t quite know where it was going. I think the book might lean a little too heavily into info dumping at times, but it’s still a really engaging read with a fantastically written, sad and personal ending. It maybe wasn’t completely satisfying, as Heim still leaves a lot unanswered and doesn’t close every thread that he opened, but the ending is certainly a highlight, even reminiscent of the all-time great ending in Mysterious Skin.
I hope Heim writes another novel someday. I also hope that this or In Awe gets a movie adaptation. His latter two novels aren’t as utterly soul-destroying as Mysterious Skin, but they’re still pretty darn good and beautifully written. Heim has such a natural, smooth way with words that makes me jealous as a writer.
The afterword section of this book was pretty fascinating too. Heim talks briefly about how Mysterious Skin became a movie, and how he toured his Kansas hometown with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He said that Gordon-Levitt even got to meet Heim’s mother before she died. Pretty cool stuff. He also talks candidly about being asked in interviews if his books are based on his own experiences.
I also found that my edition of the book was actually signed by Heim in pen on the inside cover. Had no idea until I opened the book. I sent a picture to him and he seemed surprised.
Next up, I’m planning on rereading Mysterious Skin before diving into all the other first-time reads I want to get to.
March 23, 2024
Having really thought very highly of Mr. Heim's two earlier books I was very disappointed with this one - not because of anything lacking in the writing - but because either this is a book combining one straightforward story and a bizarre subplot or it is one straightforward story weighted down by and allegorical and/or metaphorical subplot. Either way the two parts don't combine and the novel is not substantial enough to require or satisfactorily include fancy literary conceits.
The basic story, drug addicted gay son returning from New York to care for his mother dying of cancer in his childhood home in Kansas - is excellent - very moving in parts and reads utterly true for me. But then on top there is this other story concerning his mother's disappearance when she was a little girl, the people who took her, her search for them, and a young boy who she apparently draws into her search and makes a prisoner in her basement. But is any of it true? Not simply is the mother telling the truth about her childhood kidnapping but is the son making it and everything else up? Is it real or is it allegory or metaphor? I honestly don't know but the failure to understand - and maybe I am just either thick and don't grasp subtleties or I am overthinking the whole story - makes for an unsatisfactory novel, and ultimately a disappointment.
The basic story, drug addicted gay son returning from New York to care for his mother dying of cancer in his childhood home in Kansas - is excellent - very moving in parts and reads utterly true for me. But then on top there is this other story concerning his mother's disappearance when she was a little girl, the people who took her, her search for them, and a young boy who she apparently draws into her search and makes a prisoner in her basement. But is any of it true? Not simply is the mother telling the truth about her childhood kidnapping but is the son making it and everything else up? Is it real or is it allegory or metaphor? I honestly don't know but the failure to understand - and maybe I am just either thick and don't grasp subtleties or I am overthinking the whole story - makes for an unsatisfactory novel, and ultimately a disappointment.
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December 4, 2015i never wrote a review for this (like i ever write proper reviews eh), never rated it either. because scott heim's stuff is so peculiar i'm at a loss for a rating.
i adored the beginning, but the second half dragged. but seeing how special this book must've been for the author, i don't have the heart to round the rating down. so i'm not rating it at all. i'm also just unsure of my feelings towards this weird, weird story.
but the fact is, heim's writing and the general, melancholic atmosphere of his books do things to me. the man makes rural kansas seem like the most fascinating of places. it's a shame he hasn't written more novels, because i'd be there for every single one of them. there's still one left though..
i adored the beginning, but the second half dragged. but seeing how special this book must've been for the author, i don't have the heart to round the rating down. so i'm not rating it at all. i'm also just unsure of my feelings towards this weird, weird story.
but the fact is, heim's writing and the general, melancholic atmosphere of his books do things to me. the man makes rural kansas seem like the most fascinating of places. it's a shame he hasn't written more novels, because i'd be there for every single one of them. there's still one left though..
June 2, 2021
Everytime I reread this book it devastates me and makes me want to call my mother. I suspect this will shatter me when the time comes around that she does end up passing because it's such a frank look into the relationship of a mother and son where neither of them can muster up the courage to say what they really mean. I think it's deeply touching and tragic and it makes me think about my own relationship with my mother.
A very important book, probably one of, if not my absolute, favorite of all time. Scott Heim is a genius.
A very important book, probably one of, if not my absolute, favorite of all time. Scott Heim is a genius.
Read
June 14, 2011Dark, weird, heartrending: A terminally ill mother and her meth-addicted son reconnect though their obsession with a missing boy. This absolutely deserved the Lambda Literary Award it received.
July 5, 2019
Nothing, NOTHING comparing to Mysterious Skin.
A stupid and meaningless question before I forget - is there a connection between the author and the protagonist, regarding the first name? Because I barely read books with the same author's name as the narrator. Is there an identification between the two?
Anyway, back to the review. Every time I read something and find it a masterpiece, I want to read more from the same author, which is pretty normal. However, thanks to this book, I have finally come to realize mostly the author will not get to the high quality of their highlight work beside the other. Expect for Adam Silvera, who wrote 4 amazing novels, I did not met a single writer who impressed me twice, which is kinda bummer, but again, not so surprising. Mysterious Skin was a grand masterpiece, one of best I have ever read. I have also watched the movie, which was fabulous. Of course I was willing to read more of Heim's. WE DISAPPEAR was so bad comparing to his first. I even intend to think it was bad, comparing to itself.
WE DISAPPEAR is a one strange novel, telling the story of Donna, who was probably kidnapped as a child, and now, fighting an extremely hard cancer, decides to solve the mystery of what exactly happened to her alongside her son, who is addicted to meth and having an instant fight with himself and the rest of the world.
I have so much to say negatively of it and I am sorry. Firstly, the gay thing. I do not think it is right to mention this novel is about LGBT theme when Scott only mentioned it about himself in a maybe one sentence the whole book. I admit I read many books because of this theme, and I feel almost cheated. He could be straight and there will not be much difference.
Secondly, the characters. There were only girls and I did not like any of them. His mother was too insane - she actually, in her head, kidnapped a kid. Dolores is too nasty and bitchy. Alice is too hypocrite and a terrible person, her mother is going to die and she does not even stay to be with her. Also, the boy, Allen, Otis, or whatever the name he has got. Does he even exist? Who is he? Why the hell would he cooperate with an old, sick lady when he is eighteen? Come on, things like this do not happen in real life. What is the connection between him, Scott, Evan and Henry, and why the hell they all look the same? Is is suppose to be such a genius metaphor or something?
What leads me to a load, bunch of questions he never explained! What actually happened to Donna as a girl? Who is the boy at the road? Does Scott even exist? What the hell was I reading? Who is this Warren and what happened to him? Why the hell would Donna kidnap a kid? Why would a boy VOLUNTEER to be kidnapped? Why all the bothering of tying and gagging in the basement? And what is the deal of Scott - he sees the boy down his mom's house and does not freak out? And he does not release him?! WHAT IS HAPPENING AND WHY IS EVERYONE SO MAD
Lastly, it was SO CHEESY. His mother was dying the entire book. I felt it was more of his relationship with his mother than the actual mystery. I felt just like A MONSTER CALL, but mostly boring and not very interesting. I could relate a bit to Scott, because my mother is also ill and sees things. However, I never felt any bonding with her. That is why it bored me so much. When Donna finally died and Scott was like, IT'S OVER, I breathed. She finally died!
I have noticed most people pretty enjoyed it. Maybe I missed something, maybe it was so clever I could understand nothing at all. But it was so strange and I wanted something else. If I knew this was about him and his mom, I would never read it at the first place.
A stupid and meaningless question before I forget - is there a connection between the author and the protagonist, regarding the first name? Because I barely read books with the same author's name as the narrator. Is there an identification between the two?
Anyway, back to the review. Every time I read something and find it a masterpiece, I want to read more from the same author, which is pretty normal. However, thanks to this book, I have finally come to realize mostly the author will not get to the high quality of their highlight work beside the other. Expect for Adam Silvera, who wrote 4 amazing novels, I did not met a single writer who impressed me twice, which is kinda bummer, but again, not so surprising. Mysterious Skin was a grand masterpiece, one of best I have ever read. I have also watched the movie, which was fabulous. Of course I was willing to read more of Heim's. WE DISAPPEAR was so bad comparing to his first. I even intend to think it was bad, comparing to itself.
WE DISAPPEAR is a one strange novel, telling the story of Donna, who was probably kidnapped as a child, and now, fighting an extremely hard cancer, decides to solve the mystery of what exactly happened to her alongside her son, who is addicted to meth and having an instant fight with himself and the rest of the world.
I have so much to say negatively of it and I am sorry. Firstly, the gay thing. I do not think it is right to mention this novel is about LGBT theme when Scott only mentioned it about himself in a maybe one sentence the whole book. I admit I read many books because of this theme, and I feel almost cheated. He could be straight and there will not be much difference.
Secondly, the characters. There were only girls and I did not like any of them. His mother was too insane - she actually, in her head, kidnapped a kid. Dolores is too nasty and bitchy. Alice is too hypocrite and a terrible person, her mother is going to die and she does not even stay to be with her. Also, the boy, Allen, Otis, or whatever the name he has got. Does he even exist? Who is he? Why the hell would he cooperate with an old, sick lady when he is eighteen? Come on, things like this do not happen in real life. What is the connection between him, Scott, Evan and Henry, and why the hell they all look the same? Is is suppose to be such a genius metaphor or something?
What leads me to a load, bunch of questions he never explained! What actually happened to Donna as a girl? Who is the boy at the road? Does Scott even exist? What the hell was I reading? Who is this Warren and what happened to him? Why the hell would Donna kidnap a kid? Why would a boy VOLUNTEER to be kidnapped? Why all the bothering of tying and gagging in the basement? And what is the deal of Scott - he sees the boy down his mom's house and does not freak out? And he does not release him?! WHAT IS HAPPENING AND WHY IS EVERYONE SO MAD
Lastly, it was SO CHEESY. His mother was dying the entire book. I felt it was more of his relationship with his mother than the actual mystery. I felt just like A MONSTER CALL, but mostly boring and not very interesting. I could relate a bit to Scott, because my mother is also ill and sees things. However, I never felt any bonding with her. That is why it bored me so much. When Donna finally died and Scott was like, IT'S OVER, I breathed. She finally died!
I have noticed most people pretty enjoyed it. Maybe I missed something, maybe it was so clever I could understand nothing at all. But it was so strange and I wanted something else. If I knew this was about him and his mom, I would never read it at the first place.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 18, 2024
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 Mysterious Skin 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 Mysterious Skin 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.
November 13, 2024
Wow. Just wow. Scott Heim is so good at writing novels which I absolutely adore and get lost in, but would be very hesitant to recommend to anyone. This one was so dreamlike. I can't help but compare it to 'Mysterious Skin' and the manner in which they're both variations on the same topics within this Midwestern setting - memory, the passage of time, and the recovering of a lost childhood. I've read some reviews expressing annoyance at how nebulous this was, but I really can't picture the story ending any other way and really liked how muddled it is: was Otis/Allen real, what happened to Warren, what else did Donna know that she didn't reveal before she died, what of all the other children over the years? Which version of Donna's events was the real one? Did the kidnapping even happen at all? It reminds me of a lot of true crime (a genre I really don't like) where people just completely disappear off the map and there's never real closure (although Donna did get some, to an extent). It leaves you with more questions than answers, but that felt quite fitting.
Heim really knows how to turn a phrase, which is what kept drawing me in. The topics are all real, but rooted in this dreamy quality that I don't quite know how to describe. He really writes about behaviours, physicality, and settings by describing things people wouldn't often take note of, and it made every extremely visceral - whether that's to inspire sympathy, or construct an extremely discomfiting atmosphere where it needs to be. I appreciate how concise yet unhurried his prose is.
The relationship between the MC and his mother is the best part, along with the secondary character, Dolores. I love how as he's helping Donna recover her childhood, she's in turn trying to help him recover his and save him from drug addiction (I did feel like the addiction could have been better explored though. Like the effects are described, but I didn't feel them as wholly as I think I should have, compared to other aspects of the book? Especially for how important it is to his character).
Overall, I really loved it, but I'm not sure how other readers would fare. I love really internal books where nothing reeaalllyyyy happens, and I don't mind open endings either. Very ruminative and dreary, and if nothing else, read it for the language. It contains incredible similes like "as sleepy as a breather of poppies," and "When I looked again, the sun was gone, and the slashes of pink had darkened to red, as though some angel, buried alive in the sky, had frantically scratched and bloodied its nails, wanting out." I made so many highlights.
Heim really knows how to turn a phrase, which is what kept drawing me in. The topics are all real, but rooted in this dreamy quality that I don't quite know how to describe. He really writes about behaviours, physicality, and settings by describing things people wouldn't often take note of, and it made every extremely visceral - whether that's to inspire sympathy, or construct an extremely discomfiting atmosphere where it needs to be. I appreciate how concise yet unhurried his prose is.
The relationship between the MC and his mother is the best part, along with the secondary character, Dolores. I love how as he's helping Donna recover her childhood, she's in turn trying to help him recover his and save him from drug addiction (I did feel like the addiction could have been better explored though. Like the effects are described, but I didn't feel them as wholly as I think I should have, compared to other aspects of the book? Especially for how important it is to his character).
Overall, I really loved it, but I'm not sure how other readers would fare. I love really internal books where nothing reeaalllyyyy happens, and I don't mind open endings either. Very ruminative and dreary, and if nothing else, read it for the language. It contains incredible similes like "as sleepy as a breather of poppies," and "When I looked again, the sun was gone, and the slashes of pink had darkened to red, as though some angel, buried alive in the sky, had frantically scratched and bloodied its nails, wanting out." I made so many highlights.
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