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Vanishing: Five Stories
The characters in these stories operate in a world in which their voices are not heard, and are navigating prickly paths, doing what they can to survive. An attorney, mother of twin babies, is destabilized when her husband is away, and comes to doubt she has a right to her own house; a young artist thinks she knows the score when she moves from LA to New York, only to be forced to look past stereotypes to discover what really matters; a documentary filmmaker, rattled by her recent divorce, visits her oldest childhood friend, who is several years into debilitating dementia, and realizes how quickly shared history can vanish; a woman in her twenties who feels on the outside of everything forms a manipulative friendship with a mother aggrieved by her daughter's recent death; and an office manager approaching middle age is taken aback when she realizes she isn't central in the lives of her young male employees, whom she always thought adored her. These five women's lives speak to the difficulty of honing a strong identity in a culture that consistently devalues women.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
Unknown Binding
First published March 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 24, 2020
As a long-time reader of Cai Emmons, I always look forward to opening her next book and getting right down to the pleasure of reading it. “Vanishing”, the new collection of short stories, still took me by surprise. I could barely put the collection down; as I read I felt I was, like the characters, living in a world akin to a double exposure photograph. I think it’s fair to say I’m not the only one who experiences my life on many levels simultaneously. Who hasn’t felt that the person on the surface may not be the real self, not as real as the one whose internal conversation dominates and determines our response to the one outside? In these stories, each protagonist is not quite the person she appears to be, or thinks she is, or wishes to be.
With “Deed”, the first story in the book, it doesn’t take long to recognize that the narrator’s strange experience, though impossible in “real” life is still exactly true. In “Fat” neither the narrator nor the story’s subject inner self resembles her outer self. In” Vanishing” a woman literally loses herself to dementia, yet retains memories for events that provoke a primal response. “Redhead” perpetrates a terrible lie; a woman finds herself in a drama of deception that she does not stop. It’s agonizing to read and yet in the end there’s a kind of redemption. Finally, in “Her Boys”, there is self-deception, far worse in a way than other deception. In this story a woman lives in a world she’s made comfortable, but her assumptions don’t reflect shared reality.
In each story, multiple layers of fact, action, and experience occur simultaneous in time and space. Just like real life. These stories are all about how a woman lives now. It’s a painful book to read, but it’s the kind of pain that helps one’s life. The no pain no gain kind of pain. I highly recommend it.
With “Deed”, the first story in the book, it doesn’t take long to recognize that the narrator’s strange experience, though impossible in “real” life is still exactly true. In “Fat” neither the narrator nor the story’s subject inner self resembles her outer self. In” Vanishing” a woman literally loses herself to dementia, yet retains memories for events that provoke a primal response. “Redhead” perpetrates a terrible lie; a woman finds herself in a drama of deception that she does not stop. It’s agonizing to read and yet in the end there’s a kind of redemption. Finally, in “Her Boys”, there is self-deception, far worse in a way than other deception. In this story a woman lives in a world she’s made comfortable, but her assumptions don’t reflect shared reality.
In each story, multiple layers of fact, action, and experience occur simultaneous in time and space. Just like real life. These stories are all about how a woman lives now. It’s a painful book to read, but it’s the kind of pain that helps one’s life. The no pain no gain kind of pain. I highly recommend it.
October 2, 2020
I’m not usually a huge fan of short stories/anthologies but I actually really enjoyed this book!! I liked the writing style of the author and am excited now to read more from her! This book has five stories about different women who feel, invisible to those around them.
October 23, 2020
I'm not usually a fan of short stories, but these were interesting. Descriptive but just snatches of the characters lives and personalities. And the reader is expected to fill in the blanks.
June 19, 2021
Arresting stories about modern women with a brilliantly sly, bordering on speculative, tone.
July 14, 2021
I got into the weirdness of the first story, but then the other four didn't really have the same appeal for me. This fits with my generally negative feeling about short stories.
January 6, 2022
Enjoyed it!
December 19, 2019
Beginning with an epigraph from Roxanne Gay’s Hunger, Vanishing offers intricate, deeply felt stories about how we as people, and especially as woman, navigate a world in which we are unheard, unnoticed, unvalued, threatened by ostracism or obliteration. Some of the collections’ displacements are uncanny—a female attorney is supplanted by a man in her very own home. Some are willful—a woman denies a friend’s painful, embarrassing memory. Some are the result of non-human agents, dementia or a shifting climate.
For a novel so focused on what is not seen, what we overlook, Cai’s prose is keenly visual, directing the reader’s attention to details of place—a spiderweb present in just the right light—and person—tick-like dollops of make-up along a hairline. These physical descriptions offer their own bulwarks against vanishing, insisting on bodies—fat bodies, injured bodies, conspicuous bodies—red-headed or barrel-chested. The prose notes and preserves them all.
The characters in Vanishing also work toward preservation—of their sense of self, the security of their relationships, their value to others. This desire motivates acts of both cruelty and of love. One young woman, attempting to navigate self-hatred, struggles to see the personhood in a model. Another, in a manipulative friendship with a recently bereaved mother, tells stories which both offer comfort and enact, in their dishonesty, another erasure.
Vanishing reminds us of that constant but elusive fear, so rarely articulated in fiction, of diminishment. It asks to what lengths we might go to guard against that fear and how we might gracefully shape our lives with an awareness of it.
For a novel so focused on what is not seen, what we overlook, Cai’s prose is keenly visual, directing the reader’s attention to details of place—a spiderweb present in just the right light—and person—tick-like dollops of make-up along a hairline. These physical descriptions offer their own bulwarks against vanishing, insisting on bodies—fat bodies, injured bodies, conspicuous bodies—red-headed or barrel-chested. The prose notes and preserves them all.
The characters in Vanishing also work toward preservation—of their sense of self, the security of their relationships, their value to others. This desire motivates acts of both cruelty and of love. One young woman, attempting to navigate self-hatred, struggles to see the personhood in a model. Another, in a manipulative friendship with a recently bereaved mother, tells stories which both offer comfort and enact, in their dishonesty, another erasure.
Vanishing reminds us of that constant but elusive fear, so rarely articulated in fiction, of diminishment. It asks to what lengths we might go to guard against that fear and how we might gracefully shape our lives with an awareness of it.
April 24, 2023
Definitely one of the more unique and intriguing collection of short stories I've read! All centered around a female protagonist and most, female lead relationship dynamics. Feminism is not something I have read in fiction (or any genre) this way before. It felt like an insight to the natural cruelties of human behavior. I really enjoyed those aspect. Every story was held in suspense, thought provoking, and original. It's the kind of book that makes you want to write too, because it was such an experience to read. I think it is a great example of how stories could have many different perceptions of meaning depending on who is reading it. Such an out of the ordinary collection of work!
December 16, 2019
These five stories are disconcerting, in a wonderful way. The women at the center of each story are unmoored in some way, unconnected from the people and activities around them. I love the way Emmons opens their inner lives to the reader, inviting us to see and appreciate the drama behind these seemingly ordinary characters. I enjoyed this immensely, and can't wait to discuss it with my book group. (less)
September 14, 2020
Loved the first piece, The Deed, and the last piece, Her Boys. In between I enjoyed the atmospheric renderings, and the interior life of the characters.
The Deed was eerie, as I kept trying to anticipate what was going on. Relax and let it happen.
Her Boys reminded me of a start-up software firm for whom I used to work. Resonated with misconceptions that we all hold about our coworkers and our place in the hierarchy.
Worth the read.
The Deed was eerie, as I kept trying to anticipate what was going on. Relax and let it happen.
Her Boys reminded me of a start-up software firm for whom I used to work. Resonated with misconceptions that we all hold about our coworkers and our place in the hierarchy.
Worth the read.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews