An assuranced, nuanced, and compassionate classic coming-of-age story about two boys, at first surprised by how different they are from each other's perceptions, and ultimately surprised by how different they are from their own self-perceptions. Woven into this narrative is a gripping suspense story that evokes The Secret History and makes the book very difficult to put down. These are rich, developed characters, and there is much insight here into the nature of adolescence and the lonely and ambivalent workings of the heart as it first awakens to love.
-Andrew Solomon |
On September 15, 1966, a perfectly ordinary little man called Erneste receives a letter from someone he hasn't seen for 30 years. By the time he comes to open it, 15 pages later, Sulzer's disquieting narration has done two marvellous things: Erneste's life as the perfect waiter of the title has been expertly and entirely evoked, and the reader is completely intrigued to know both what's in the letter and why the sight of the handwriting on the envelope alone is enough to tear open his heart. When we find out the answers to those questions - well, this is a story which it would be wrong to spoil by giving away too much in a review. The Guardian |
[S]uspenseful....Clearly, this is a writer well acquainted with darkness.... We Disappear ventures down a twitchy, discomfiting path, with small disturbances blowing up into larger ones, like a film camera zooming in for a high-definition close-up.... more honest, and thus more troubling, for it reflects the stark knowledge that truth is only an amalgam of experience, a collection of individual shards that don't coalesce into a pleasing whole. The search for truth invites the Hansels and Gretels of the world to follow the wrong adult home, the Alices to peer down the rabbit hole—and fantasy to cover up the nasty grime of reality.– LA Times |
