Through the Looking Glass: Notes on Disappearance
By EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL
1.
My mother has me on a Canadian literature program. Twice a year, birthdays and Christmases, a package arrives from British Columbia with one or two Canadian books in it. I have strong opinions about selecting books for nationalism, but these gifts are wonderful, among the highlights of the year. She sends me novels and poetry that I might not have come across in an American bookstore: Shani Mootoo’s spectacular He Drown She in the Sea, Ann-Marie MacDonald’s The Way The Crow Flies,Patrick Lane’s poetry. The most recent package included Vanishing and Other Stories, byDeborah Willis. I’ve been reading it in the subway to and from work all week. It’s very good.
The title seemed familiar when I first saw it, and then I rememberedVanishing: A Memoir, by Candida Lawrence, which I’ve been meaning to read ever since it came out last year. Which made me think of something I’ve noticed lately: with no disrespect intended to either Willis or Lawrence, an awful lot of books have vanishing in the title. A cursory search on Amazon reveals about a dozen novels and books of poetry called either Disappearing Act or Disappearing Acts, and at least twice that many titled Vanishing Act or some variation thereof—I confess that I stopped counting after the first couple search pages on both counts—and that’s not even counting the scores of books with the word Disappearance in their titles. (read more)
