The Vanishing Place, by Zoe Rankin
The Vanishing Place by Zoe Rankin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Strong start, shaky middle, and an ending that can’t make it whole. Another New York Times recommendation…
It started out so well: Effie is a policewoman. Having been born and raised in New Zealand (NZ) for her first 15 years, she’s now in her thirties, living in Scotland.
Suddenly, back in NZ, a girl appears from out of the bushland. She looks just like Effie at that age. Of course, Effie feels she must go back and investigate.
This is basically what the first third of the novel focuses on. It’s interesting and gripping; Effie “feels” like a self-reliant, competent woman. The descriptions of NZ’s bushland were brilliant and the writing was perfectly fitting. The pacing was good and the story full of promise.
The second third deals with Effie’s investigation and discoveries in NZ, and that’s how the cookie crumbled for me: Effie, who did well in Scotland and whose instincts and experience from her earlier life in NZ came back to her, this Effie suddenly starts to look like a naive damsel in distress. Her childhood sweetheart, now himself a local policeman, whom Effie immediately falls for again after 17 years of absence and he falls for her, too, has to rescue her time and time again. The pacing starts to become rather uneven here – there’s one particularly long slog that should have been much shorter.
The final third introduces a third timeline following the two already established timelines (young Effie in NZ, today’s Effie in Scotland/NZ). It details a view of a closely related story which, to me, didn’t actually add much to the by now somewhat convoluted story. The endling, unfortunately, didn’t really help redeem this novel.
It’s really a shame; this novel held so much promise. Ultimately, though, it’s bogged down by clichéd devices (e.g., the motherly matron saving our heroine, the manly local hero, and similar tropes), uneven pacing, hard-to-believe plot elements, and other small flaws. For me, it fell far short of what it could have been.
Three stars out of five.
