Vanished

Rating:
Summary: An amazing book!!
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Utterly engrossing
Review: I read this before Amazon was even "born." The characters are not ones you would want to get to know but are the kind of people who seem to always fall into trouble of their own doing. You will find it disturbing, amazing, eventful, pessimistic and sad. The ending is all too true in this world.

Rating:
Summary: I think I read a different novel.
Review: I was a but surprised to see that there were so many glowing reviews of this book. I felt as though I must have read a different novel, as I found very little to like about it.

I found the plot tiring and tired-- a beat-down simple man swept away by a crazy damaged woman, and I found most of the plot elements (the abduction of the child, her emotional abuse) to be rather clumsy attempts at emotional manipulation rather than moving or hard-hitting. Dotty and Aubrey are some of the oldest characters in the world, and I found nothing particularly new in her treatment of them.

I was pleased to discover that it was her first novel-- the writing itself is skilled and it gives me hope that her work has improved over time. Still, I'd skip this one.

Rating:
Summary: Artful but depressing
Review: Mary McGarry has come a long way since her first novel, *Vanished*. I would definitely suggest reading this novel first so that you can see how her writing has evolved over time.

In *Vanished*, Aubrey Wallace is a married father of two and working road construction when a pretty young girl named Dotty sweeps him away on an adventure he'll never forget. Within twenty-four hours, Dotty has kidnapped a baby girl, and Aubrey is uncertain he'll ever return home.

The novel tracks their progress over time and their quick moves to evade the police and child protective services. The couple makes money by selling random items at swap meets and flea markets, and Dotty spends more time flirting with the men they meet on their travels than being a mother to Cannie. Eventually, their wild race must come to an end.

Although I thought the plot could have been really exciting (to keep up with the awesome ending), I couldn't find sympathy for any of the characters. It made it difficult to continue reading at the very least. Once again, either start with *Vanished* or just go straight to *Fiona Range*.

Rating:
Summary: Primal Family Instinct
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: HEART BREAKING AND TRAGIC--A WONDERFUL READ
Review: This book broke my heart! Tragic people whose lifes intertwine. I could not put this book down. It haunts me still.

Rating:
Summary: an unbelivable, boring book with a great ending
Review: This book grabs you and when you finish reading it, you never see the world in the same way. Their life is pathetic and heart wrenching. All the characters are depressing and unmotivated. All the time you are reading, you know at some point the fallacy has to end. The ending will have you thinking, and thinking. Swept up in the circumstances of their lives, they all seem victims unable to control anything. I felt sorry for Canny, the child who is kidnapped and sorry by the way things turned out for Wallace.

Rating:
Summary: A Compassionate Study of Compulsion
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Artful but depressing
Review: Vanished is an extremely compelling tale; I finished it in less than a day. But be aware, gentle reader: this is a book that HURTS.

I loved Mary McGarry Morris's Songs in Ordinary Time and A Dangerous Woman, and I liked Fiona Range, but I wasn't prepared for the intensity of Vanished. A real story about love weaves through this tale of an abused teenager, a mentally challenged man, and a kidnapped child who are bound together by happenstance and careening toward disaster. However, like Of Mice and Men, it is not for the faint of heart.

Without a doubt, Vanished is artfully crafted. But it seemed to me to dish out cruelty at the speed of light, and I was left feeling pretty hollow at the end.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Unknown Novelist Strikes Gold
Review: 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