Vanishing

Vanishing is a collection of pieces that initially seem rather straight forward; yet this simplicity is deceptive. It hides layers of complexity, as the writer, Candida Lawrence, reflects on her dreams, experiences, memories, in order to give shape to the life of a woman of many identities. The title of the memoir refers to the fact that she, in her 40s, vanished with her two children, after she had lost custody of them in a difficult divorce. However, it is not just this vanishing that the book chronicles. Equally, she tells of the vanishing of friends, lovers, cherished pets, even civility, as one ages, and as the culture devolves. Two themes stand out in Ms. Lawrence's narrative. First there is her burning commitment to the self-determination and freedom of each individual, child, woman, animal, and second, the effort at balancing the dual identity of artist observer and experiencing person. As an observer she tells her story in the "past tense", but as an experiencing person, she lives in the "present tense". At times she is an advocate for freedom and self-assertion, and at other time she is an artist, creating a spear of action that is pure art. I don't always like Candida Lawrence, but I always admire her fierce commitment to the integrity of human authenticity, and to the honesty of her artistic vision. One should read this book and ask, how and why does each of the selections fit into the whole book. Each one does.

The title piece of this collection is about Lawrence disappearing with her two children after a bitter divorce and living underground for 20 years (subject of 2 earlier books: Reeling and Writhing and Changes of Circumstance). Subtle takes on the very question of identity abound here as Lawrence, a brilliant memoirist, tracks her life with a chain of observations from her personal history both as a writer and as a woman, some of them intensely, excruciatingly private. And she does it with relentless honesty and no apologies, whether they are told straight or slant. Some of the 17 pieces, spanning from her college years in 1942 to 2007, are clearly memoir, others blur the lines. But by the end of Vanishing, it is clear that Lawrence has arrived at a time in life when she feels that she has "been upon this earth too long," that her frame of reference for basic and crucial life matters - especially seminal relationships - is vanishing around her in the wake of cultural desensitization -- lap dancing (literally) and the ubiquitous swarm of technology, emailing and text messaging. Lawrence is a big fan of Raymond Carver's, and one of the best pieces in the book is an imaginary conversation with him. Accordingly, with a touching lack of irony, Lawrence tells at the end of Vanishing of calling her beloved and recently dead sister's phone, just to hear her voice on the answering machine. Vanishing is Lawrence's message left on our answering machines, so to speak - her Where I'm Calling From - told to us in understated, non-judgmental prose, put on record before it and she vanish from this earth.