How Quickly She Disappears

I love books set in Alaska. Seriously, they always have a dark and dangerous vibe to them that I adore. Alaska becomes a completely separate character more than any other setting. Perhaps it is my unfamiliarity with the state or its apparent lack of civility, but I enjoy any story that occurs in Alaska simply because it occurs in Alaska.

Having said that, you would think I enjoyed How Quickly She Disappears. After all, the action occurs in Alaska. Unfortunately, no setting can help you enjoy or even sympathize with the characters. Even worse, Raymond Fleischmann’s thriller hinges on his characters. If you don’t feel for Elisabeth, then you are not going to enjoy the story.

Frankly, I did not like any of the characters. Alfred is show more creepy AF, which should be a good thing except is nothing but a distraction. Elisabeth’s husband is an asshole. Their daughter is a burgeoning teenager with all of the self-absorption and attitude. As for Elisabeth, she should be a tragic figure. After all, she lost her identical twin sister. Plus, she left behind a career and some semblance of independence to move to a remote fishing town in Alaska. Except I could not connect to her at all. I did not understand her motivation and lost patience with her eagerness to ignore her own common sense. The entire story does not hold up under rational thought, and I did not have the patience with any of the characters to set aside my rational side.

Also, even though the novel occurs at the beginning of World War II, there is an odd timeless quality to the story that disconcerted me. For someone who acts and thinks like a “proper” 40s housewife, there are times when her thoughts and actions do not fit into that pattern. At those moments, she acts more modern than she is. Those moments always jarred me and prevented me from finding her a sympathetic character. In fact, I started to fear that this was going to be another unreliable narrator story. I doubt this was Mr. Fleischmann’s intention.

I opened How Quickly She Disappears with low expectations, hoping for an intriguing lost person mystery that would entertain me at the very least. It did not entertain me so much as somewhat disgust me as I did not like any of the characters, an utter failure in a character-driven mystery. Even Alaska could not redeem this one for me. show less

How Quickly She Disappears by Raymond Fleischmann is a historical mystery set in Alaska.

In 1941, thirty-one year old Elisabeth Pfautz, her husband John and their eleven year old daughter Margaret live in Tanacross. John works for the Office of Indian Affairs and his latest posting is teaching the Athabaskan children in the village. Elisabeth is also a teacher and she is homeschooling Margaret. Elisabeth has never quite recovered from the loss of her twin sister Jacqueline who disappeared twenty years earlier at the age of eleven.

Past and present soon collide with the arrival of Alfred Seidel, a rather strange man who claims to have information about Jacqueline. Following his arrest for murder, Alfred is jailed in Fairbanks. Elisabeth show more continues to be drawn into his orbit with his promises to tell her about Jacqueline but only if she follows his directives. Will Elisabeth learn the truth about Jacqueline's fate?

Elisabeth is in an unhappy marriage and she remains deeply troubled by Jacqueline's disappearance. Despite her qualms about allowing Alfred to stay with her and Margaret while John is away, she feels like she has no but to offer him a bed. She is drawn to him but she is equally repelled by his intensity and odd behavior. Elisabeth is determined to discover the truth about Jacqueline and she makes increasingly desperate and questionable choices that could result in tragedy.

Interspersed with events in the present are dream-filled chapters about Elisabeth's childhood. These sequences reveal the somewhat strained relationship between Elisabeth and Jacqueline. Elisabeth is a dutiful daughter but her sister is defiant and desperate to run away. Jacqueline's unsolved disappearance is a defining moment in Elisabeth's life that she can never move past.

How Quickly She Disappears is a rather atmospheric mystery with a setting that springs vividly to life. The novel's premise is unique but the pacing is slow and the entire plot is somewhat unrealistic. With one exception, the characters are unlikable with whiplash inducing personality changes. Elisabeth's conviction Jacqueline is still alive leaves her willing to take extreme risks. Raymond Fleischmann brings the novel to an unsettling, cliffhanger conclusion. show less

*Received via NetGalley for review*

Elizabeth's twin sister disappeared when they were 11, and Elizabeth has moved on as best she can, with a husband, a daughter, and a career. But now, living in remote Alaska with her husband always gone and forced to homeschool her daughter, Elizabeth meets a German pilot who insists he knows things about her sister. But he only tells her this after he brutally murders her only friend in the remote town, and sends her down a twisted path for the truth.

An incredibly interesting premise that's a little let down by the execution. Alfred clearly has some kind of hold on Elizabeth that's destructive, but amplified by her unhappiness with her life. She makes bad decision after bad decision, and it's so show more frustrating because I wasn't really able to understand. Yes, I felt her frustration, but not her compulsion. I mean, she goes back to Alfred after he tries to kill her! She takes her daughter to him!!

And while the ultimate conclusion is satisfying (if predictable), there are still some frustrating unanswered questions that are introduced at the very end. Like What did Alfred tell Margaret to get her to help him escape? What did he do to her in the cabin that resulted in his slashed hand? These are simple questions that would have taken maybe a paragraph or two to answer, but instead we're left in the dark. show less

Living in rural Alaska, Elisabeth is lonely. Soul crushing lonely. A plane comes once a week to deliver supplies and mail,but other than that human contact outside her family is infrequent. Then a stranger arrives....he's a substitute pilot for the supply plane. Alfred Seidel says he has a secret....but he will only tell her if she agrees to three demands. The secret? He knows about the disappearance of Elisabeth's twin sister 20 years before. Elisabeth has been haunted by thoughts of her sister since she vanished....and the obsession Seidel creates will lead to murder and an unraveling of Elisabeth's life and relationships.

I think I liked the setting and the emotional vibe of this book better than I liked the mystery portion of the show more plot. I can't imagine the mental stress of living isolated in the middle of nowhere....then add in a creepy guy with a very very dark secret. Yikes. Double yikes, in fact. I feel like this book was more about Elisabeth sliding into obsession and a very dark place, rather than about the mystery of her sister's disappearance. Elisabeth changes from a woman dedicated to her child who is trying to make a difficult marriage work into a changed person....pretty much a hot mess....by the end of things. A stranger and his strange secrets and actions upend her life. The vibe and emotion was heavy and dark, and I ended up really not liking Elisabeth or any of the characters.

I've been mulling over this book for more than a week as I tried to decide how I feel about it. The story is good....but, for me, the emotion/darkness of it was difficult to read. Heavy stuff. But in my opinion, a book that leaves me thinking heavy thoughts for several days because I'm having to come to terms with events, character's actions, and the ending.....deserves at least four stars from me. This book left me thinking about how fragile people can be, and how I might react in the same circumstances.

A bit distressing for me....but, all in all, a good story. Excellent debut novel! I will be reading more by this author!

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Berkley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.** show less

This was my final selection from Penguin’s First to Read program. Unfortunately it is shutting down today! I’ve greatly enjoyed being a part of the program for the past few years. I’ve found many favorites through them, including this book, HOW QUICKLY SHE DISAPPEARS.

A historical suspense novel set in Alaska in the 1940s was too tempting to pass up, and I got pulled into the story right away. A tiny, isolated town in the Alaskan Interior was the perfect setting for this eerie story. I was very intrigued by Elisabeth’s quest to find her missing sister, gone for 20 years, and the lengths she’d go to get answers. Alfred was a truly creepy character, and I was flipping the pages to find out what he knew! The author did a great job show more building up tension, and I was pleased with the conclusion. Haunting, riveting, and enjoyable.

Disclosure: A free copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. show less

Twenty years ago, when she was 11, Elisabeth's twin sister, Jacqueline, disappeared. The mystery was never solved. Now, on the eve of World War II, she is married with a daughter and living in a small town in Alaska where her husband is a schoolteacher. A stranger flies into town, unaccountably murders one of the townspeople, and while in custody tells Elisabeth that not only is her sister still alive, but he knows where she is. This starts a cat-and-mouse game between the two, as Elisabeth tries to find out the truth and the stranger asks for more and more from her in return.

This debut was a suspenseful mystery with an exciting conclusion. The Alaskan setting is used to good effect. My only quibble might be that I didn't really show more believe this was taking place in 1941. Other than the wartime preparations, I didn't get a sense of the time from the way the people spoke or behaved. It's a minor thing, as I still became immersed in the story and, like Elisabeth, I absolutely had to know what had happened to her sister. show less

How Quickly She Disappears is Raymond Fleischmann's debut novel. It certainly shows a lot of promise but is hit or miss on the whole.

Other than the fact we always, one hopes, care about characters who are hurt or being mistreated, I really just didn't care enough about these people to feel the tension that should have been building. Obviously reading is a dynamic, so it is part me and part the novel. I felt the characters, Elizabeth in particular, started out and, for too long, stayed single dimensional. Since in any novel we don't yet know the characters, this is true to a large extent. But they should be well on the way to becoming fully fleshed out before the key action starts and for me this simply didn't happen. I was playing catch show more up trying to care about the person in the "current" narrative which kept me from becoming as engaged as I would have liked in the "past" narrative.

The writing was good. I guess good writing is why some call this a "literary" thriller? I wish they would leave off the word literary when they are writing their blurbs for genre fiction. This is no more or less literary than many other such novels. I guess the purpose is to make it sound more like "serious" fiction. It fails every time because literary, as used in current publishing, as I used it as an undergrad, as a grad, and as an instructor, and as used in most lit books, is either defined so broadly as to be useless or so narrowly as to be useful only in the context used. In book blurbs, they must mean it extremely narrowly and they rarely offer what defines those boundaries, so we have to use one of the many definitions we have from our past. And this book, as well as most others, don't meet but a very few definitions and those are almost always questionable ones. Just call it a thriller! Okay, I feel better now.

I didn't dislike this book and would still recommend to readers who love historical thrillers and/or thrillers where an incident from the past plays a part in the current incident. That said, had I still been doing editing and writing groups, I would have suggested a rewrite, nothing drastic but a lot of little tightening up chores to bring the reader in sooner, gain more investment, then let the story take off. I think, if I had been more invested before take off, I would have really enjoyed this a lot more.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads. show less