Book Review: Vanishing And Other Stories

We have all heard stories about people who simply vanish. We are drawn to these stories like gawkers at a train wreck. They have us hypnotized by the sheer audacity of such a willful act.

Deborah Willis makes her debut as the author of such stories. These stories aren't all about people who leave and never come back. There are various kinds of "vanishing" in life, we learn.

In one story, Tabitha is ten years old when her writer/lawyer father inexplicably leaves while she and her mother are at the store. 

On the day that her father disappeared, Tabitha came home with her mother and went up to the attic.

"Dad?" she called up into the dark place where he did his writing. No answer, and before she could help it, she imagined her father hanging from the ceiling. She pictured it like the movies: his crumpled face and a sinister, creaking rope. She imagined that his swinging body looked long - not tall, long. She climbed the ladder, feeling sick and dizzy as she put her foot on the final step. Then, weak-kneed with relief - initial, foolish relief - she found the attic empty.

As the years pass, we learn how Tabitha is faring in the world. How she is dealing with the loss of her father. How it shapes who she becomes.

"Nearly everybody's heard of the playwright who disappeared, and when people learn Tabitha's last name, three times out of five they ask if there's any relation. When she nods, they say things like, "He must have been such a fascinating man." Yes, she smiles. He was very clever. Vanishing, she thinks, was the smartest thing he ever did. 

The author holds us firmly in her grasp as she deftly moves among these characters that she has fleshed out to seem so real. She can easily get inside the character of man, woman or child. And each nuance seems perfectly crafted. 

It is because of this trait that I think we'll be hearing a lot about Deborah Willis, Canadian citizen and clerk in a book store. Former horseback riding instructor and reporter. Along with a bevy of other jobs along the way. 


She has found her calling. She must write. It would be such a shame if this woman did not simply write.