'Vanishing Acts' explores memory, identity
Vanishing Acts
By Jodi Picoult
Atria Publishing, 448 pp., $25
Delia Hopkins is an expert at finding missing persons. She and her trusty bloodhound are well known for their search and rescue missions in rural New Hampshire, where she has led a life of comfort and contentment. Raised by her widowed father, Andrew, she is engaged to the love of her life, with whom she has a young daughter, and, as the story opens, she and Eric are finally preparing to get married.
But as Delia's story evolves in Jodi Picoult's compelling new "Vanishing Acts," it becomes clear that the missing person at the core of the novel is Delia herself.
Old photographs and dreams begin triggering flashbacks about people and events she can't quite remember, things that seem somehow vaguely familiar yet disassociated from the life she thinks she knows. But just as she starts to question her father about her confusing recollections, he is arrested and remanded to Arizona, charged with kidnapping his young daughter when she was only 4 years old. He confesses to taking Delia, then named Bethany, away from her mother, Elise, and disappearing into a new life. And with his pained admission, Delia's entire history is turned upside down. How and why could her adored father have done this? Is her mother really dead, as she was told all these years?
As Delia confronts a lifetime of memories that may or may not be true, she must also deal with loss, betrayal, grief, and anger. "Let me tell you what happens when you cook down the syrup of loss over the open fire of sorrow: It solidifies into something else. Not grief, like you'd expect, or even regret. No, it gets thick as paste, black as ash; yet it isn't until you dip a finger in and feel that sharp taste dissolving on your tongue that you realize this is anger in its purest form, unrefined; a substance to be weighed and measured and spread."
With Andrew's impending trial in Arizona, Delia, Eric (who signs on as Andrew's attorney), and their daughter, Sophie, move to Phoenix. Fitz, a newspaper reporter as well as Delia and Eric's best friend from childhood, tags along for support. As the investigation and trial proceed, Delia's life story gradually comes together.
Each chapter of "Vanishing Acts" is written in first person by one of the five main characters, each of whom fits his/her individual pieces into Delia's complicated puzzle. It's an effective contrivance, but with each change of voice comes a shift in tone that is often extreme and jarring. Andrew's chapters, which plunge the reader into the damp, grimly violent world of prison life, feel almost like another book and are wrenching in emotional intensity.
Each subsequent chapter feels a little like stepping from the dark back into brilliant Arizona sun -- the glare is a little blinding. One of the most intriguing characters is Ruthann, a Native American woman who befriends the group. Though her voice never gets its own chapter, she lives vividly through the descriptions of the others, and it is through her that the history and Indian lore of Arizona come to life.
Picoult, whose 11 previous novels include "Songs of the Humpback Whale" and last year's New York Times bestseller "My Sister's Keeper," is a pro at lively storytelling. "Vanishing Acts" is richly textured and engaging, and there are a few twists and turns that keep the plot from being too predictable. But ultimately, "Vanishing Acts" is about the elusive nature of memory. "Memories are like a still life painted by ten different student artists: some will be blue-based; others red; some will be as stark as Picasso and others as rich as Rembrandt; some will be foreshortened and others distant. Recollections are in the eye of the beholder; no two held up side by side will ever quite match."
For Delia, the issue revolves around how memory imprints identity, how it informs who we are. She believes it is, as author Terry Tempest Williams claims, "the only way home," yet her own fractured recollections must be pieced together, bit by bit. "Memory isn't something that stays with you at all times. It's a quantity that gets summoned or evoked or brought to mind. It gets carried to an arena for our viewing pleasure. By definition, then, there are times it must go missing." Recovering those memories of early childhood becomes a kind of emotional/psychological "search and rescue" whereby Delia not only finds herself, she can finally understand and fully appreciate those she loves. 