Vanishing and Other Stories by Deborah Willis

This is another great trade paperback from my friends at Harper Perennial, a place where they’re building authors, careers and reputations. The title story,  ’Vanishing’ is a fine example of how a non-linear story can take shape, and even the best parts of the narrative can be spread out over the whole thing, instead of just sprinkled in at the end. Don’t get me wrong, the last sentence of this story will kick your ass, and it’s a slippery sliver when it gets into you, but there are other moments, especially when the young narrator visits her father in his attic while he’s composing his plays.  As the story weaves around, and around, we’re tickled by Dad’s disappearance, perhaps it’s his wife, a muse gone cold, who occupies the downstairs of the house with her sister, who has driven him to staring out the window for a year, while thinking about writing, but doing no writing.

I liken Tabitha to a young Zooey Deschanel. Why? I don’t know. I seem to project my love of movies on the fiction I read. I can always imagine an actor in a part I’m reading, even if they never get cast in the adaptation.  Tabitha is a stage actress herself, and as a grown up we are deprived of her most brilliant talents. Well, deprived isn’t the right word; I wanted to meet Tabitha, talk to her about the things she saw that she didn’t talk about in the story of her father’s disappearance.  You see, one day Tabitha came home and her father was gone.  His plays went on to be produced to great acclaim, and like a burst of steam, he’s gone.  Tabitha finds ways to navigate her way through life, grow up, and even remind us in flashback what her mother was like, how she ran the house, or the Elvis Presley bust that sits in the closet. The only downside to this story is really the upside, it’s the first story of many, but I wanted to see what else would happen to Tabitha, but I suspect if you get a chance to read this collection, you can imagine it for yourself. -JR