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Overview
A French teacher who collects fiancés; a fortune-teller who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter; an aging cowboy seduced by a city girl . . . these are some of the unforgettable people who live in these pages.
In Vanishing and Other Stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents, and children. With wisdom and dexterity, moments of dark humor, and a remark- able economy of words, Deborah Willis captures an incredible array of characters that linger in the imagination and prove that nothing is ever truly forgotten.
Synopsis
A French teacher who collects fiancÉs; a fortune-teller who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter; an aging cowboy seduced by a city girl . . . these are some of the unforgettable people who live in these pages.
In Vanishing and Other Stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents, and children. With wisdom and dexterity, moments of dark humor, and a remark- able economy of words, Deborah Willis captures an incredible array of characters that linger in the imagination and prove that nothing is ever truly forgotten.
Publishers Weekly
The characters in these tidy stories navigate turbulent relationships with family members and romantic partners, many of whom vanish, as in the title story, about a daughter's struggles to reconcile her father's sudden desertion of their family. In "The Weather," a teenage girl's new friend betrays her. "And if there was one thing I knew," the narrator says, "it was that this wouldn't get easier. It would ache for years." This lesson holds true for most of these stories, particularly in "Remember, Relive," the second-person narrative of a young woman grappling with a traumatic past as her mother sinks into an Alzheimer's haze. Other stories have decidedly narrow focuses, as with "The Separation," about an 11-year-old's relationship with her aloof older sister, or "Escape," about a young widower's fledgling gambling addiction. Though the stories share themes and narrative tone, each stands firmly on its own, with Willis in full control as the characters face down their losses. (Sept.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
The characters in these tidy stories navigate turbulent relationships with family members and romantic partners, many of whom vanish, as in the title story, about a daughter's struggles to reconcile her father's sudden desertion of their family. In "The Weather," a teenage girl's new friend betrays her. "And if there was one thing I knew," the narrator says, "it was that this wouldn't get easier. It would ache for years." This lesson holds true for most of these stories, particularly in "Remember, Relive," the second-person narrative of a young woman grappling with a traumatic past as her mother sinks into an Alzheimer's haze. Other stories have decidedly narrow focuses, as with "The Separation," about an 11-year-old's relationship with her aloof older sister, or "Escape," about a young widower's fledgling gambling addiction. Though the stories share themes and narrative tone, each stands firmly on its own, with Willis in full control as the characters face down their losses. (Sept.)Montreal Gazette
"Arresting. . . . Her words feel essential and elemental. She is one of those writers who makes fiction feel less of a genre than a language unto itself. . . . Charming, warm and humane."Times Colonist
“A remarkably accomplished collection. . . . Economical, artful description. With her stories, Willis boldly inhabits the skin of all sorts, of all genders. . . . Her talent and skill are nothing short of formidable. . . . Accomplished, edgy, dark stories.”Vancouver Sun
"Flecked with welcome humour. . . . Equally salty-sweet. . . . Her attentiveness to detail and her succession of insights about the small moments people share and the consequences of individual choices keep us turning pages, enthralled."Calgary Herald
"Spare, haunting and insightful, these stories are wonderfully wrought snap shots about human frailty and loss that will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading."Globe & Mail
"The stories in VANISHING show the magic of fiction at its best: fully realized worlds inseparable from the uncanny fact that they exist as mere words, magnificently strung together. Willis’s creative sleight-of-hand illuminates human intricacies as if tapping directly into your own."Alice Munro
"The emotional range and depth of these stories, the clarity and deftness, is astonishing."Time Magazines Colonist
"A remarkably accomplished collection. . . . Economical, artful description. With her stories, Willis boldly inhabits the skin of all sorts, of all genders. . . . Her talent and skill are nothing short of formidable. . . . Accomplished, edgy, dark stories."Booklist
"A remarkable new writer, Willis delivers 14 lovely tales and countless vivid moments in her first fiction collection....Readers will feel the joy of discovery in reading an emerging writer whose work will crowd our bookshelves for years to come."Kirkus Reviews
The well-made, mostly downbeat stories in Canadian writer Willis's debut collection feature characters with an intimate understanding of loss—loss past, loss present, even the losses to come.
In the title story, a daughter struggles to come to grips with the disappearance of her father, a writer—but the detective work here is to plumb the ultimately unsolvable mysteries of mind and motive. "Escape" features a formerly stolid and reliable doctor who, after his wife's untimely death, first takes up nocturnaltrips tothe casino and then a not-quite-innocent-but-not-quite-sinister obsession with a female blackjack dealer who was once a sleight-of-hand artist. "Caught" recounts a dalliance between a female ichthyologist and one of her undergraduate students. Willis tells the story in the subjunctive mood, speculating, switching perspectives, blurring details: "There's more than one way it could go," she begins. "Outside the office there might be the shuffle of shoes on waxed floor..." In less steady hands this might feel gimmicky or showy, but Willis employs the techniquewith great patience and deftness, thwarting again and again the reader's desire to find a safe and stable place to make judgments—that's not,she delicately insists, the point. Several stories, notably "Sky Theatre" and "The Separation," anatomize thecomplexities and pleasures of female friendship. The former ends witha fleeting, beautifully realizedmoment of connectionbetween two high-school girls, the narrator and the class beauty who's now confined to a wheelchair;the latterexploresthe fraught relationship between two young sisters traveling back and forth by bus to visit their fatherduring a marital separation.
Willis's style is resolutely unflashy, and she doesn't show much range of tone and mood, but this is a remarkably mature, self-assured debut by a writer whose work will draw comparisons to Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant.