The Disappeared by Kim Echlin

This book was on last year's Globe and Mail annual book list and it has languished on mine since then.  Glad it finally bubbled up to the top.

The story is about a young woman who falls in love with a man who left Cambodia before the genocide in the late 1970's.  When the country is stable again, he is haunted by having left and returns.  She loses touch with him - for many years - then goes to Cambodia to find him.  It's a love story but also a tribute to the sad history of Cambodia.

Perhaps the best thing about this book was the style in which this was written.  It was like reading a novel-length poem - not one superfluous word, but nothing under-described either.  Both the passion of the love between the two main characters and the terrors endured by the Cambodian people were depicted crisply.  Some specifics of place and time were minimized in favor of creating a mood throughout the book.

Perhaps it was the war-torn Asian setting that reminded me a bit of The Lotus Eaters.  The writing in that book was much more straightforward, but the question of whether to love in the face of terror is futile was similar.

Recommended.