Customer Reviews

Vanished

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

How does one attempt to relate to you how engrossing this story is? There are some strong emotions and issues going on with this story. Briefly, the story revolves around a young female con-artist, Dottie, who by chance (and only chance) happens upon a slow witted man, Aubrey Wallace. Aubrey has a (bitter) wife and family of his own, but is constantly berated and harrassed by her. Aubrey and Dottie link up in a freak meeting and he is literally overwhelmed..from that moment on he is under her control and she takes every advantage of it. A young toddler, Cannie, gets snatched right out of her own house and from under her distracted mother. Suddenly, the toddler finds herself a new mother and father. Her new mother is but an immature, self-centered child herself and only took the child for use as a smoke screen to avoid her past. For mentally challenged Aubrey, his heart rules his head in many instances, and he genuinely grows to love and adore Cannie, as Cannie grows to love him and believes both of them to be her parents. A child's allegiance is strong, and this bond introduces disastrous consequences. Years pass as they remain homeless and always trying to keep one step ahead of detection by the law. Their life is pathetic and heart wretching. As the situtions become more complicated, Aubrey struggles with right and wrong, love and abuse. All the time you are reading, you know at some point the deception has to end. The ending is a surprise and extremely intense. You will find yourself torn with loyalties and attachments on both sides of the issue. Mary McGarry Morris is brilliant

Vanished is Mary McGarry Morris' masterwork, a complex and entrancing story of a man caught outside the life of his community who is suddenly torn from his hometown by forces he can't fully comprehend. Oddly, most of what he doesn't comprehend is personified by the girl who "kidnapped" him -- a wily, scheming, insecure girl who runs because she has to.

Morris, relatively unknown before Oprah picked up on her most recent best-seller, "Songs in Ordinary Time," is an author who began writing late in life. Her long experience in a world beyond the bounds of rarified "literary" fiction shows in her compassion for her main characters.

In Vanished, her insight is most marked when she refuses to give definite reasons for things. Instead, she allows the emotional weight of an event to compound until its consequences become inevitable. In this book, so many things disappear -- but they always leave traces. Traces of hope, and of desire.

In this book, an arbitrary escape turns into a four year odyssey. But it's not the typical trip out of contemporary fiction, full of drugs, sex, and lost weekends. Instead it's a simple journey, replete with attempts at security and love, emptied of cynicism or sardonic humor.

Thus, the terrific ending comes as a shock, and yet feels right after all. How else could such an extraordinary journey conclude but with the unexpected?

Winner of the Pen/Faulkner Prize, this book beats Morris' "Oprah"-Recommended "Songs in Ordinary Time," hands-down

Finally, a place to say my piece about "Vanished," which I read several years ago and which had a huge, huge effect on me. I've read it twice and listened to it on Recorded Books, Inc. (read by the incomparable Barbara Rosenblatt). Each time I sort of hoped I wouldn't go through the trauma I did at its ending. The first time, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I cried so hard, I thought my heart would break. In fact, I kept getting weepy over it for weeks following, at odd moments. It would just sort of pop up in my mind. But the second time I read it I thought, good, I was expecting this, and I'm not going to go through that same exhausting catharsis. Then I found myself standing at my ironing board next day and whoosh! up came the tears. I would put it on a par with "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison; another heart-wrenching classic about unfairness and the violation of the innocent. When I heard it read on tape, I was again walloped. For sheer experiential reading, this is IT. As one of your writers said, it should have been nominated for big literary prizes. Indeed, I think it deserves the Pulitzer at the very least. Morris's strength is her absolute refusal to stereotype. As a writer myself, I know what hard work that is; either that or, as I suspect, the woman is simply a genius - as such, she gets it right without having to try. Mary, if you read this, you have a diehard fan here in santa fe, new mexico. I always tell anyone who asks about the books I recommend, that you are the greatest. I loved them all!! (and my name is Martha, so needless to say, I identified with "A Dangerous Woman, which I thought was very well brought off in the movie. Deborah Winger was a surprisingly fabulous Martha!)

Do you ever e-mail your fans? As a (so far) unpublished novelist, I could use a writer's encouragement. Oh - and encore, please,encore!

This book was a gift. I picked it up and put it down many times, thinking I could not handle the subject matter. Finally, I was so hungry for good writing that I had no choice. Good writing was only one of my rewards. A journey with Aubrey Wallace, through his accidental and tragically maniuplated misadventures, was an enlightening and humbling experience. The truth will never be known, but the author spins a compelling and enchanting story about a simple-minded accomplice and his role in a compulsive and ill-conceived kidnapping. In the end you care deeply about Aubrey and the girl and find a seed of hope for human dignity and kindness. There are many treasures to be found in this tale.

This book broke my heart! Tragic people whose lifes intertwine. I could not put this book down. It haunts me still.

It was better. I just got finished reading the book and I can't begin to describe in words what I experienced, only that it was engrossing and extremely well written.

The characters in this book couldn't be more remote from any people that I knew in my childhood - or experienced in my adulthood for that matter. Even the setting, the climate and the raw feel of their world was foreign to me.

It came upon me like a strange fairy tale. A weak, incompetent man full of self-doubt left by the side of the road by his "buddies" encounters a wild strange girl looking for a way out of her life. He becomes consumed with her desperation and she becomes increasingly consumed with her self-destruction.

Almost against my will, I became involved in their lives, and the life of the hapless child they "adopted". Soon I found my own childhood echoed in the conflicts and struggles this "family" experienced. Emotionally, their experience became all too familiar to me.

Finally, I came to understand in my own way each character's individual struggle for independence, acceptance and the need to belong. Family - we need to belong, yet we loathe to yield.

An important book that will bear many readings and yield many lessons.

A good author knows how to end a novel. This novel's ending will have you thinking, and thinking... You will relive the entire book after you finish it all due to the ending.

The amount of good in the heart means nothing if it doesn't find its way to the surface. For good has to live in the forefront of one's existence. It has to be rewarded, embraced, set free, shared, passed on. . . or it does no good. The good in Wallace never flourished, was never nourished. The suppression of the good in Wallace allowed the evil in Dotty to grow and consume their entire existence. Although I'm not disappointed that things appear to work out for Dotty in the end (she truly deserved a break), I am very saddened by the way things turned out for Wallace; he too needed a break. Mary McGary Morris has elevated herself to one of my all time favorite authors. I thoroughly enjoyed "Songs In Ordinary Time" and "Vanished" is indeed a wonderfully crafted work of art that I will remember for a lifetime.

I don't know why I gave this book three stars, since it is truly the most depressing book I have ever read. I have to say that despite that, it was hard to put down. It is about a retarded (and taken advantage of) man who hooks up with a total nutjob named Dottie. These two losers kidnap a little girl, and are on the run for the next five years. They have the most hideous lifestyle, they think they love this little girl, but are to stupid to realize how horrifyingly abusive and damaging their lifestyle is. They eventually hook up with a family that is even more depressing and deranged than they are. I think I stuck with the book in hopes of a good ending..which never happened. When I finished this horror, I actually felt sick, unsettled and depressed. I recommend reading this if you like to be severely depressed.