Watch Me Disappear
by Jill Dawson

An interesting read this novel. Tricky to follow in places as the MC, Tina, is an epileptic and possibly mildly autistic. Her thoughts are not always easy to understand.

It is always said that we can never go back, but Tina goes back to her UK home to her brother's wedding. She did not have a happy childhood and her own daughter's behaviour triggers memories. When Tina was eleven her friend vanished; she had supressed this, but now bravely traces those memories and comes to a kind of peace for herself, but not for her unloving mother and 'into denial' brother. They will have to trace their own memories to find peace of mind.

Readers who like to think, to puzzle out the clues, and enjoy watching a character sort herself out will like this book. It is not a quick, candy floss read but well worth reading.

Until I can have a private star rating for my own personal use - I do not agree with the Amazon methods of apply our readers' star ratings to an author's rating, which can affect their sales - I will not add a star rating.

Als een in Amerika wonende mariene biologe in 2002 voor de bruiloft van haar broer, terugkeert naar Engeland, gaat ze zich steeds meer herinneren over de onopgeloste verdwijning van haar jeugdvriendin dertig jaar geleden ( )

For a few pages at the beginning I ummed and ahhed over whether to put this down and put it on the "going straight back to the library" pile. After that I struggled to put it down at all. It was a completely captivating read. The narrator is Tina, a girl from the Fens who ends up working at a prestigious American university. She's researching seahorses, which isn't really essential to the plot, but the detail adds a depth to the book. Coming home to England for her brother's wedding she digs into her own thirty year old memories of being ten years old when one of her best friends went missing. It's coincidental to the plot that the area Tina returns to is in the midst of searching for two missing girls in a real life story. The reference is obvious and I'm not sure why the author doesn't make it explicit. Coincidental to the plot, but not to the book. The author did a fabulous job of constructing the layers of the story and gradually stripping them back. It was all very believable, the cultural references nearly all seemed bang on, and I can't find much to fault about it. Great stuff.

I first saw this book reviewed in a newspaper review section. It immediately piqued my interest and I soon bought the book. I was certainly not disappointed upon reading.

The characters within the book are well-developed, and the book has a definite sense of place and time.

The book is both an easy-to-read mystery and a page turner. A book easy to get lost in with an overriding sense of sadness throughout. ( )

Tina comes home from the US for a family wedding, and this brings memories flooding back from when she was 10 and her best friend Mandy went missing.
A subtle novel, in which the author forces Tina to relive her memories and she gradually realises what must have happened to Mandy, and how it affected her life and family in so many ways.
Very evocative of East Anglia and girlish pastimes of the 1970s, but also rather creepy, this novel is highly recommended. ( )