The Disappearance

by Efrem Sigel

When Joshua and Nathalie Sandler's only child, 14-year-old Daniel, disappears one flawless summer day in a tiny hamlet in western Massachusetts, their world changes in an instant. Over the next year,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1579621805
• ISBN13: 9781579621803
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Permanent Press (NY)
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful. Heartbreaking. Sad.

I saw this book come up on the "coming soon" list and made a mental note to look out for it, but when someone sent it to me, I lept at it! It sounded a little different than what this genre usually entails and it did not disappoint. The book itself moves a little slowly, but not in a bad way... it takes you through this couple's heartaches. It's somewhat muted, but completely and utterly engaging. It didn't make me cry or anything, but it gripped my heart and squeezed for all it was worth. It was a tough one, in that respect. I felt like I was with the father a lot, the desperate search, the look back at what he should have done, what he did wrong, what he did right, what he could have done differently. It was almost... manic? Is that the word? It was... sad. The way the book is written is a subtle story, of love, of loss, of remorse, of letting go and moving on and looking behind. This beautifully written, reading it you know how it must go along, but you keep waiting and hoping for something different. I don't want to spoil it too much, but this is a book you experience more than read. I don't hesitate in recommending this book. It's a really good book and I'm happy that I got the chance to read it. It's rough, but it hits home with a reality that, well, it smacks you in the face. No one likes to think of things like this, but the harsh reality is that it happens and this is a story of how one couple dealt with it. The good - and the not so good. Get this. It's good.

'Disappearance is a heart-breaking, suspenseful..but a great read!!

Sigel creates a heart-rending and emotional page-turning novel of two parents trying to deal with every parent's worst nightmare come true: a child goes missing and is found months later dead. The parents each deal with the tragedy in different ways: The two suffer alone, silently: They grow apart. Sigel's wonderful descriptions are touching, suspenseful. I felt their angst and pain as they try to come to terms with their grief and the uncertainty of their son's disappearance. The parents are so real that I could not help but identify with them and want to help. Sigel is a masterful story teller: He's equally wonderful in setting the scene of the town the where the tragedy takes place and in developing the colorful characters of the townspeople. I can see the forest, the house they lived in. I have met the neighbors. This is not a run-of-the-mill whodunit -- the characters are too real for that. Indeed, I was very uncomfortable picking up this novel, but did so because Sigel's short stories are absolutely wonderful and I wanted to see how he would write a novel. I was not disappointed. For two days [I could not put the book down!]. I had to find out what happened to their son and see if the parents would remain together and move on. 'Disappearance is a great read!!

A parents worst nightmare!

Reviewed by Danielle Feliciano for Reader Views (2/09) In the blink of an eye your world can change. Nobody realizes this more than parents Joshua and Nathalie Sandler. New Yorkers who summer in a tiny Hamlet in Massachusetts, they find their world turned upside down in the aftermath of the disappearance of their fourteen-year-old son, Daniel. In the year following Daniel's disappearance, we will follow Nathalie deeper and deeper into despair as she turns inward in an attempt to deal with what she has lost. We follow Joshua on his desperate journey to find out what happened to his son before it is too late. Skipping frequently from present to past and back again, the reader is treated to a very full picture of each character in the book. In addition to the Sandlers are Daniel's friends who may or may not have something to do with what happened, a power-hungry town selectman, a sheriff of a small town suddenly faced with big-city problems, and an unlikely ally found in a beautiful woman. As he leads up to a heartbreaking ending in "The Disappearance," Efrem Sigel does a fine job of drawing the reader into the lives of the Sandlers and those who surround them. However, the flipping back and forth between present and past happened to be a bit too much for my taste. At times it was not done smoothly enough to know what was going on which caused some confusion. Also, while I appreciate detail in building up a story, Sigel drowns the book in details which takes away from the story. There were times that I found myself skimming because I felt like I had been reading the same thing for too long.

Touching Character Study of Grief More Than A Whodunit

Basic Overview The Disappearance is about every parent's worst nightmare -- the unexplained disappearance of a child. The Sandler family is a happy, affluent family spending the summer in the small Massachusetts town of Smithfield. The two parents -- Joshua and Nathalie -- dote on their 14-year-old son Daniel. Nathalie thrives as a cellist for the New York Philharmonic. Joshua has taken over the family business and made it successful -- enough so that he is able to invest in a new resort being built near Smithfield. And Daniel is a parent's dream -- smart, athletic, personable. Although Daniel and Joshua have begun to butt heads as Daniel begins to establish himself as his own man, the family is essential happy and loving. So, one ordinary afternoon, when Joshua and Nathalie run a mundane errand into town and leave Daniel behind, they have no reason to think twice about it. But when they return, Daniel is gone. With no real reason to worry, they believe he has gone out with his friends or for a walk. But as the hours pass and Daniel doesn't show up, Joshua and Nathalie begin to worry. They begin calling Dan's friends, checking with neighbors and searching their small town. But Daniel doesn't come home, and Joshua and Nathalie become increasingly concerned and frantic. They call the police, and the search for Daniel begins in earnest. Days pass and no trace of Daniel is found. Joshua -- increasingly frustrated by the police's failure to find his son -- takes matters into his own hands and begins conducting his own investigation. He is unable to sit still knowing that Daniel might be out there somewhere. And as days turn to weeks and weeks into months, Joshua becomes obsessed with finding answers. He is always in motion, always looking for new avenues to explore. By contrast, Nathalie shuts down -- barely able to take care of herself. Her beloved cello sits neglected. She drops out of life. The strain on their marriage takes a toll. And, then, the mystery of what happened to Daniel is solved -- but is it too late for Joshua and Nathalie? My Thoughts When I first started this book, I thought I was getting a standard-issue whodunit: "A boy goes missing. What happened to him?" But I found so much more. The mystery of what happened to Daniel is really almost secondary to the primary story -- which is how Daniel's disappearance affects Joshua, Nathalie and their marriage. In fact, the mechanics of solving the mystery of what happened to Daniel were the least satisfying aspects of the book. Of course you want to know what happened, but I felt the driving force of the book is not solving this mystery. Instead, the book is a well-written character study of Joshua and Nathalie and how Daniel's disappearance affects them. I've always read that the death or disappearance of a child usually affects each parent differently -- to the point where marriages are often destroyed rather than cemented by a common grief. Joshua's need to take action contrasts strongl

A Powerful Novel of Loss

From the first paragraph of lush, gorgeous prose, in which Sigel describes Joshua running toward the light in The Hollow, I knew this would be a heartbreaking, yet uplifting book. The title is a bit misleading, as the mystery behind the disappearance of 14-year-old Dan Sandler plays second fiddle to its aftermath in the lives of his parents, Joshua and Nathalie. I knew what the resolution to the disappearance would be, but that's not the point, and the flawless pacing made The Disappearance extremely difficult to put down. The suspense is relentless, fueled by dips into the past that begin to shed frustrating shafts of light on a mystery that at first is in absolute darkness. No one saw anything the day that Dan disappeared. There is no physical evidence of any kind. Over weeks and months, as hope fades and Nathalie and Joshua fall apart both separately and as a family, pinpoints of light reveal murky connections and slim clues. I'm normally resigned to reading in fits and starts, but I desperately wanted to shut myself in my room and read this book in one go. I stayed up far too late to find out if Joshua and Nathalie would find closure, or at the very least, a way to move on. The Sandlers are newcomers to their summer home of The Hollow, a hamlet outside the little town of Smithfield, Massachusetts. When they return to their real lives in New York after the disappearance, Joshua throws himself into work while maintaining a grueling schedule of investigation in The Hollow: calling the police chief twice a day, spending his weekends interrogating neighbors. Nathalie's cello sits untouched as she plunges into depression. Their opposing responses to uncertainty and grief push them further and further apart. The struggle of parents following a child's death or disappearance is a story that's been told a thousand times, but Sigel's portrayal is fresh and realistic, and Nathalie and Josh are shown so clearly that their agony is almost unbearable. It is a credit to Sigel that I, too, held out hope for a happy ending to Dan's disappearance. The small town is drawn beautifully. The police chief, Sammons, is not the usual bumbling hick portrayed in small-town law enforcement. He is thorough and determined, and most importantly, he cares deeply and never gives up on finding answers for the Sandlers. Information about the townspeople is dribbled out in a realistic, non-intrusive fashion. Coupled with Sigel's gift for description, this makes for a richly nuanced image of The Hollow and its inhabitants. In The Disappearance, Efrem Sigel has crafted a haunting, beautiful novel of tragedy's aftermath, with deeply human characters and a satisfying resolution. On My Bookshelf