I don’t read short stories very often, but the back cover of
Vanishing and Other Stories by
Deborah Willis promised secrets, missing loved ones and dark humour, so how could I resist? And now I find myself feeling somehow not qualified to review this book—what do I know about short stories after all? (And what other gems might I be missing?) The 14 stories in this book all feature some kind of absence, from dead or missing wives to disappearing fathers and lost innocence.
My favourite story is probably the title story, “Vanishing,” which is about the disappearance of a local writer. What I loved the most about this story is how circular it feels, as if the writer’s disappearance somehow creates ripples both
before and after the fact, as if not only does the past change the present, but the present also somehow alters the past. I don’t mean to make this sound messy or confusing when in fact it’s subtle and elegant and intriguing.
But it’s hard to pick a favourite when Willis manages to write not one but
three stories in the second person that I actually enjoyed (when this is a device I generally loathe). Of the three, “Traces” is my favourite, which is about a wife addressing her husband’s mistress. (It didn’t hurt that the story was set on Salt Spring Island, which I’ve visited many times.) Although I saw the twist coming, that didn’t stop me from marvelling at how perfectly second-person narration fit this story.
The story that felt most true, that made me imagine it was autobiographical, was “Sky Theatre,” about an ordinary kid who is briefly pulled into the orbit of the most beautiful girl in her school. In fact it was two of the stories about kids, this one and “The Separation,” that seemed most real to me—as if Willis had inhabited those girls’ lives from the inside.
The only story I didn’t like was “This Other Us” about a trio of college students who live together until one of them suddenly moves out. What happens next is disturbing and I disliked being left hanging at the end, unsure of what was going to happen to the narrator. It felt
important that I know, because I hated one of the possibilities—the ending actually left me feeling betrayed.
Willis writes with a deft hand, often weaving back and forth in time, and sometimes, as in the title story, folding the story back onto itself in such a way that you rethink the whole notion of time as a linear concept.
In the end, I’m not sure I’m doing these stories justice. Let’s just say I highly recommend that you read them and see for yourself, even if, like me, you think you don’t like short stories!
Vanishing and Other Stories was a finalist for the
Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2009.
Thank you to
Harper Perennial for sending me this book to review.
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Vanishing and Other Stories is on blog tour with
TLC Book Tours in August and September. Visit these other blogs for reviews:
Booksie’s Blog •
Eleanor’s Trousers •
The Lost Entwife •
Raging Bibliomania •
All about {n} •
In the Next Room •
Cozy Little House •
Rundpinne •
Confessions of a Bookaholic •
Life in the Thumb •
Library QueueOther reviews:Cozy Little House •
Kevin from Canada •
Leafing Through Life •
Mrs. Q: Book Addict •
PANK •
Rayment’s Readings, Rants and Ramblings •
Sasha & the Silverfish •
The Brown Tweed Society_______________________________________________
Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books they received during the previous week. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists! Mailbox Monday, which was started by Marcia at The Printed Page, is on blog tour—this month, it’s hosted by Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Weblog. (Note that I will be hosting this meme next month.)
Today is the Up from the Blue E-Party in celebration of Susan Henderson’s launch of her debut novel, Up From the Blue and since the book kept me up for hours last night (I read half of it in one sitting, basically), I thought I’d share a few of my favourite quotes so far:
I picked up I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman while I was at BEA this spring. I happily snatched it up without even looking to see what it was about because I’d read and enjoyed her earlier book, What the Dead Know. So I was more than a little dismayed to realize Lippman’s latest is a serial killer story (have I mentioned how much I don’t enjoy those enough yet? I still keep reading them though!). I’d Know You Anywhere is the story of Eliza, a happily married 38-year-old mother of two, who one day receives a letter from death row inmate Walter Bowman, the man who held her captive for six weeks the summer she was 15—she was the only one of his victims to escape alive. When I hit chapter 2, which is a flashback to 1984 told from Walter’s point of view, I almost put the book down. But Lippman’s writing drew me in and in the end, I’m so glad I kept reading!
I don’t read short stories very often, but the back cover of Vanishing and Other Stories by Deborah Willis promised secrets, missing loved ones and dark humour, so how could I resist? And now I find myself feeling somehow not qualified to review this book—what do I know about short stories after all? (And what other gems might I be missing?) The 14 stories in this book all feature some kind of absence, from dead or missing wives to disappearing fathers and lost innocence.
Cecil started off by reading us Grandma’s Gloves in its entirety. (She prefaced her reading by telling us to “put on our sad pants,” an expression I’d never heard before.) The story is sweet and sad—it brought tears to my eyes. Cecil is obviously an experienced reader of picture books—she took the time to show all of us each picture in turn. She then read us what turned out to be one of my favourite passages from Rose Sees Red (which I’ve almost finished).
audience. A local YA author (whose name I unfortunately didn’t catch) asked her a series of questions, interview-style, about voice (how she found her 14-year-old voice, how she made sure she used the right teenage lingo), which was super interesting. Cecil said she made it up, or rather that she listened to her characters—she figured all schools have their own rules and vocabularies... She also told us that Rose lives in the apartment she grew up in and there really was a Russian family next door, although their daughter was four years younger than she was. Basically, she used the setting of her adolescence, but made up the people.
