Watch Me Disappear (Brown)

Watch Me Disappear 
Janelle Brown, 2017
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812989465


Summary
Who you want people to be makes you blind to who they really are.

It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan—a Berkeley mom with an enviable life—went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found, just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot.

Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie’s death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends.

But then Olive starts having strange visions of her mother, still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he understood about his wife.

Who was the woman he knew as Billie Flanagan?

Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth — about Billie, but also about themselves, learning, in the process, about all the ways that love can distort what we choose to see.

Janelle Brown’s insights into the dynamics of intimate relationships will make you question the stories you tell yourself about the people you love, while her nervy storytelling will keep you guessing until the very last page. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 12, 1973
• Raised—San Francisco, California
• Education—B.A., University of California-Berkley
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Janelle Brown is an American author and journalist-essayist. She was raised in San Francisco, California, and graduated from University of California-Berkeley in the 1990s. Eventually, she decamped to Los Angeles where she lives with her husband and two children.

Brown began her career as a staff writer for Wired, and then spent five years as senior staff writer for Salon. Early on she helped found and edit Maxi, an irreverent, and now defunct, women’s pop culture magazine. She has also written frequently for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Elle, Vogue, along with a number of other publications.

Brown, however, is most widely known for her novels — Pretty Things (2020), Watch Me Disappear (2017), This Is Where We Live (2010), and All We Ever Wanted Was Everything (2008). (Adapted from the publisher .)

Book Reviews
Brown’s novel is more than just a page-turning suspense story. It’s a gripping family drama that focuses on the choices we make and the ties that bind us to the ones we love.
Publishers Weekly


With romantic subplots and surprise elements, including an unexpected finale, this evenly paced novel is multilayered enough to have wide appeal.… [A]long the lines of The Silent Wife or The Couple Next Door, this has less overt violence and a more emotional story at its heart. —Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont.
Library Journal


Like a darker, meatier Where'd You Go Bernadette, Brown's latest explores the messy inner life of a mother just starting to feel invisible to her own family. This brilliantly layered novel is full of twists and turns, tender and biting and vibrant.… [A] tautly paced domestic drama.
Booklist


It's because the author deftly incorporates [various] themes…, however, that the book is so page-turning. Readers are likely to be unsure of which outcome would be most satisfying until the very end. Moody but restrained, this is a familiar tale that sets out to upend itself — and succeeds.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our Generic Mystery Questions.)

GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers

1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?

2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?

3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?

4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?

5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.

1. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
2. Are they plausible or implausible?
3. Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?

6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?

7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?

1. Is the conclusion probable or believable?
2. Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
3. Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
4. Perhaps it's too predictable.
5. Can you envision a different or better ending?

8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?

9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?

(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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